SARAJEVO, Aug 11: Princess Diana shed tears for a Sarajevo teen-age mine victim at the end of her three-day Bosnian campaign against land mines and heard that funds for demining operations are almost exhausted.

On a day when her visit was overshadowed by publication of photographs in a British Sunday paper showing her kissing millionaire Dodi Al-Fayed, reputedly the new love in her life, the Princess met mine victims in Sarajevo.

She also toured one of the cemeteries where Sarajevo's 11,000 war-dead are buried, embracing an 80-year-old woman who was visiting the grave of her son.She ended her tour of victims amid the smoke from Sarajevo's burning garbage dump in the run-down suburb of Buca Potok.

She entered the home of a 15-year-old Mirzeta Gabelic, one of a growing number of Bosnians killed and wounded by mines long after the war for which they were planted had ended.

Mirzeta's plight was worse as her parents had no money for an artificial limb when she had bottom half of her right leg shattered by a mine blast seven months ago.

``Diana started to cry when she heard about Mirzeta's story,'' recounted Jesuit Father Roberto Maryans who said Jesuit priests paid for the $ 1,500 prosthesis.

``Her family could not afford a prothesis and Mirzeta could not move,'' he said. ``We found her sitting in her house and waiting for a solution.''After a private half-hour meeting between Diana and Mirzeta's family in their house, close to the hillside dump where Sarajevo burns its rubbish, the teen-ager said: ``I have never seen a princess before.''

The princess, wearing a pink shirt and black jeans, was told that the United Nations was starved of funds to pay for mine-clearance work during a tour of the UN's Mine Action Centre.

``Funds are desperately needed,'' an official briefing document given to Diana said. ``The present limited programme has not enough funds to last until the end of the year.''

``Only $ 7 million out of a $ 38 million requirement has been given to the UN's demining programmes. As a result the United Nations has trained only one-tenth of the 1,200 mine hunters Bosnia needs,'' an official said.The UN's deputy special representative in Bosnia, Martin Barber, said he had asked Diana to use what influence she had to get more money.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.