The third anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on Thursday, is expected to pass with
only low-key remembrance.
Prince William, Diana's 18-year-old son, will be away from home on the latest leg of his gap year
between school and university.
And Prince Harry, who is 16 in two weeks' time, will be with his father, the Prince of Wales, at
Balmoral, the Queen's private estate in the Scottish Highlands. It was at Balmoral, on August 31, 1997,
that the Prince of Wales told William and Harry about the Paris car crash which took their mother's life.
Charles and Harry were with the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the 100-year-old Queen Mother at Crathie Church,
Balmoral, last Sunday. Prayers were said although Diana was not mentioned by name, as is traditional in the Church of
Scotland.
The Princess's brother, Earl Spencer, is expected to spend the anniversary quietly at Althorp, the Spencer family's ancestral
home where Diana was laid to rest on an island in a lake. The Northamptonshire estate, which has been open to the public
during the summer, will close tomorrow until next year.
At Buckingham Palace, the state apartments will be open to the public as usual during the annual summer opening. Elsewhere in
London, people are expected to lay flowers at the gates of Kensington Palace, Diana's former home.
In Paris, more floral tributes are expected to be left at the unofficial shrine above the Pont d'Alma tunnel where the fatal crash
happened.
The Princess will also be remembered in prayers at Westminster Abbey where her funeral service took place.
Mohamed Al Fayed's security director, John Macnamara, will tomorrow stage a press conference in the United States on the
eve of the third anniversary of Diana's death. The Harrods owner's son, Dodi, also died in the high-speed crash with the car
driver, Henri Paul, and Diana.
At the Washington DC press conference, Mr Macnamara is expected to release new details in Mr Al Fayed's continuing search
for information on the tragedy.
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Fayed to sue CIA for documents on Princess Diana(Yahoo: Reuters)
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mohammed Al Fayed, convinced the car crash that
killed his son Dodi and Princess Diana was no accident, will sue the CIA and other
U.S. agencies this week for documents that could shed light on the incident.
Lawyers for the Egyptian-born tycoon plan a press conference on Wednesday to
announce the lawsuit against agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the
National Security Agency and Defence and Justice Departments.
U.S. lawyer Mark Zaid said some requests will be for specific information, including any recordings of
telephone calls between Dodi and Diana made by the NSA, and in other cases would be more general.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said he could not comment on the lawsuit until it had been filed and the agency had a chance
to read it. "But I would emphasise that any suggestion the CIA had anything to do with this tragedy is ludicrous," he said.
Fayed, who owns London's Harrods luxury department store, has unsuccessfully tried to subpoena the documents through
another U.S. court case and will now sue for them under the Freedom Of Information Act.
Diana and Dodi were killed in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997. Fayed believes it was a murder plot to prevent his son
and the mother of the heir to the throne from marrying.
On his Web site www.alfayed.com, he sets out his case, "It is my firm belief that Britain's racist establishment found (Dodi and
Diana's) relationship utterly unacceptable, and so conspired with the intelligence services to have them killed."
Says Prince Philip Masterminded Plot
Fayed has long been at odds with the British government which has repeatedly denied his requests for citizenship.
He claims Prince Philip masterminded a plot to kill the lovers and it is being covered up by the CIA and Britain's MI5 and MI6
intelligence services.
The government has rejected his appeal for a full inquiry, referring him to a French investigation which found that Dodi and
Diana's driver crashed because he was drunk.
Zaid, of Washington firm Lobel, Novins & Lamont, played down suggestions by lawyers in London that there would be
revelations at the Washington news conference.
"Most of the information we will be discussing will be new to our audience, but in some form or another it's all been out there,"
he said in a telephone interview.
The lawsuit is to be filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday, the three-year anniversary of the car crash that stunned the world
and plunged Britain into an uncharacteristic open display of grief.
It will seek records relating to Diana, Dodi Fayed, the driver of the car Henri Paul and others.
Fayed wants documents related to Oswald LeWinter, who claimed to have worked for the CIA and tried to elicit $20 million
(13.7 million pounds) from Fayed for what turned out to be forged documents that were supposed to indicate the British
government was behind the fatal car crash.
LeWinter was sentenced to four years in prison in 1998 in Vienna for trying to sell fraudulent documents which he gave to a
representative of Fayed at meetings in Austria.