Queen worried about Dodi-Diana union, butler says

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Princess Diana's butler Paul Burrell said on Wednesday Britain's Queen Elizabeth told him she had been concerned about Diana having a long-term relationship with Dodi al-Fayed.

Giving his third day of testimony at an inquest into their 1997 deaths in a Paris car crash, Burrell said he requested a meeting with the queen after Diana's death as he was concerned that Diana's mother, Frances Shand Kydd, was shredding so many of her documents.

When pressed in court about what Queen Elizabeth had told him at the meeting, a reluctant Burrell said the queen was concerned that the princess had become "rather over-excited".

Asked what she said about a long-term union with Dodi, Burrell replied: "Her Majesty was concerned about the future."

He said he had never asked the queen if the royal family had been involved in Diana's death.

"I wouldn't be so presumptuous," he said. "I would not ask Her Majesty The Queen such a personal, intimate question about her daughter-in-law."

Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of luxury London department store Harrods, says his son and Diana were killed by British security services on the orders of the queen's husband, Prince Philip.

Fayed says he believes her killing was ordered because the royal family did not want the mother of the future king having a child with his son. He alleges that Diana's body was embalmed to cover up evidence she was expecting a baby.

Asked in court if he thought Prince Philip had plotted to murder Diana, Burrell replied "That is fantasy."

Al-Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield asked Burrell about suggestions that Philip, notorious for making tactless gaffes in jest, had called Dodi "an oily bedhopper".

Burrell said of Prince Philip: "He has made a few mistakes in the past. I cannot possibly think he would say that."

The disappearance of confidential court papers prompted the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, to issue a stern warning on Wednesday to anyone caught removing evidence.

A lawyer's copy of documents, which included a witness statement and a confidential letter from Paul Burrell, disappeared and were later found on the first-floor landing in the Royal Courts of Justice where the inquest is being heard.

"If anybody is found taking documents from counsel in this way, they can expect very serious consequences," Scott Baker told the court.