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Diana was "desperately" in love with Pakistani surgeon

NEW YORK, Friday (AFP,Reuters) Princess Diana was "desperately" in love with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan when she died and not Dodi Fayed, who was killed in a car accident with her, Diana's former butler Paul Burrell has told ABC television.

"It was Hasnat," Burrell told ABC interviewer Barbara Walters in an interview to be broadcast Friday.

Asked whether Diana had wanted to marry Khan, with whom she had a relationship before Fayed, Burrell responded: "She wanted desperately to, yes."

Burrell, once described by Diana as her "rock", has written a book about his time working for the princess. Excerpts serialised in a British newspaper ahead of publication next week have triggered headlines with revelations that Diana believed there was a plot to kill her.

Diana and Dodi Fayed died in a car crash in a Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.

The princess met Fayed after her relationship with Khan, which Burrell said the surgeon had broken off.

"They were two very like-minded people ...two people who wanted to go out into the world and help others ...two humanitarians," Burrell said in the interview. "I think there were too many complications on both sides," he added. "The princess always said she came with a lot of baggage." Diana met Dodi Fayed shortly after but Burrell indicated that the princess had no intention of marrying him. "She said she needed a marriage like a bad rash." Meanwhile three photographers who took pictures of Britain's Princess Diana and her friend Dodi al Fayed in their car shortly before their fatal crash in 1997 go on trial in a Paris court for invasion of privacy.

The case against Jacques Langevin of Sygma agency, Christian Martinez of the Angeli agency and freelancer Fabrice Chassery follows a complaint by Dodi's father Mohamed al Fayed, the millionaire owner of London's famous Harrods store.

The trial for invasion of privacy will hang on a recently established precedent in French law under which the interior of a car is deemed private even if it is on a public road.

If found guilty, they could be jailed for a year and ordered to pay fines of 45,000 euros ($53,000).

Egyptian tycoon Mohamed al Fayed lost his bid to have the photographers chasing the car tried for manslaughter when France's highest court ruled they were too far away to have caused the accident.

The trial comes amid renewed controversy in Britain over Diana's death following the revelation by her former butler Paul Burrell of a secret letter in which the princess predicted her own death. Burrell said the princess had given him a letter written in October 1996 in which she said someone was planning to kill her in a car crash, in order to allow her estranged husband Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, to remarry.

The report led Mohamed al Fayed, who has repeatedly claimed Diana and his son were murdered by the British secret services because their relationship embarrassed the royal household, to renew his call for a full public inquiry.

The British government has rejected the demand.

Evidence at the initial inquiry showed that the driver Henri Paul had been drunk at the time of the accident, something his parents deny.

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