12 January 2004	Monday	19 Ziqa'ad 1424

LONDON: Michael Burgess, the royal coroner, is coming under intense pressure to ask US intelligence agencies to hand over top secret files on Princess Diana which may provide vital clues as to how she died.

The National Security Agency (NSA) admits it has files on Diana, and there is also speculation that the Central Intelligence Agency may hold useful information for British detectives investigating the car crash which killed Diana, her boyfriend, millionaire playboy Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur, Henri Paul.

On Saturday the NSA confirmed that it held intelligence on Diana, but stressed it had never actively monitored her movements. "The National Security Agency does not target British citizens, and any information that NSA holds that references Princess Diana is purely incidental to its collection," a spokesperson said.

Numerous attempts by Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed al- Fayed, to have the documents made public were thwarted by the US authorities, and this fuelled the conspiracy theories that have rocked the British monarchy in recent years.

In November 1998, when pressed under the Freedom of Information Act, the NSA acknowledged there were 182 documents running to 1,056 pages which concerned Diana in the possession of US intelligence agencies.

Of these documents 39 were classified as Top Secret. The NSA said they were "classified because their disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security".

Last week's revelation that London Metropolitan Commissioner Sir John Stevens is to investigate allegations that Diana's death was "not the result of a sad but relatively straightforward traffic accident" has fuelled speculation that Britain's most senior police officer will ask the NSA and other US intelligence agencies to co-operate with the inquest and hand over their files. Acutely aware of the need to protect the inquest's sources, Stevens is to model his investigation on the inquiries he carried out in Northern Ireland into alleged collusion between security forces and loyalist terrorists.

The inquest is expected to cost taxpayers millions of pounds and, depending on the level of co-operation it receives, may take up to 18 months to complete. The French authorities are soon to hand over more than 6,000 pages of unpublished material to their UK counterparts, who are said to have adopted "a no stone unturned" policy in examining potential new leads.

When asked if the team reporting to Stevens would request the US files, a spokeswoman for the royal coroner said: "That's a matter for them." A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard declined to comment.

An NSA source confirmed that inquiries about the files had been made by various interested parties in the past, but declined to say whether they would be released to the royal coroner if requested.

The contents of the American intelligence documents are the subject of acute speculation. It is believed that several files contain profiles of members of the French underworld who were thought to be in Paris at the time of Diana's death, at least one of whom owned a white Fiat Panda, a car said to have been seen in the tunnel shortly before the fatal crash.

According to documents filed in the US District Court of Columbia, Fayed's investigators and lawyers believe the files may also contain satellite images of Paris taken on the night Diana died - Aug 31, 1997. This could provide crucial evidence as to whether any other vehicles entered the underpass at the same time as the Mercedes carrying Diana.

Fayed's lawyers also want to establish whether the NSA has any transcripts of Diana's intercepted telephone calls and whether the French authorities investigating her death asked for forensic assistance from the US government.

In 1999 Fayed enlisted the support of George Mitchell, the US Senator who helped broker the Northern Ireland peace process, to look into allegations that the US authorities were withholding documents relating to Diana's death. -Dawn/The Observer News Service.