Newspaper says Diana feared Charles plot against her

The British government has begun a top-level police investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, as a newspaper named Prince Charles as the person she suspected of plotting to kill her.

More than six years after Diana died in a car crash in Paris, Britain's royal coroner, Mr Michael Burgess, opened an inquest into her death by saying Britain's top police officer should investigate claims her death was not an accident but a deliberate plot.

"I am aware that there is speculation that [her death was] not the result of a sad but relatively straightforward road traffic accident in Paris," Mr Burgess told the inquest, which was packed with hundreds of journalists from around the world.

"I have asked the metropolitan police commissioner [Sir John Stevens] to make inquiries."

Diana died at the age of 36, along with her lover Dodi al Fayed and their chauffeur Henri Paul, in the August 1997 crash.

In a front-page splash today, the Daily Mirrornamed Charles as the person she had claimed was "planning an accident" to kill her. She made the allegation in a letter she gave to her butler and confidant, Mr Paul Burrell, before she died.

The Mirrorquoted from the letter Diana wrote just 10 months before her death. "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous," it said. "My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury."

A spokesman for Prince Charles declined to comment.

Royal biographer Mr Robert Lacey said Diana's claim that her husband wanted her dead reduced the credibility of the allegation.

"It does raise the question about Diana's state of mind, her own paranoia, her sense of panic," he said.

Dodi's father, Mr Mohamed al Fayed, multi-millionaire owner of the exclusive London store Harrods, has long claimed his son and Diana were murdered by secret services because their relationship was embarrassing the royal household.

Mr Burrell, who gave the Mirroraccess to the letter as part of a serialisation of excerpts from his book, published late last year, reacted angrily to news Charles' name had been revealed.

"I am not very happy about it . . . I only learnt about it late last night. And it was always my intention never to publish that name," he told reporters.