LONDON, February 8: In a new angle to the Diana, Dodi love story, a British woman claimed here today that she had borne a daughter by Dodi before he became involved with Princess Diana, the Observer newspaper reported today.Diane Holliday, 36, said the girl was born in the United States in November 1996, and was given up for adoption. Holliday, currently living in England, has hired a lawyer in an effort to regain custody of the child and to prove that Fayed was the father of the child.
The Observer added that Scotland Yard is investigating a complaint against Holliday by Tiny Rowland, a businessman who lost out to Fayed's father, Mohammed Al Fayed, in a bitter fight for control of the Harrods department store. Neither Rowland nor the police gave any details about the complaint.
Just before the time when Fayed and Diana died in an August 31 car crash in Paris, Fayed had also faced a breach-of-promise suit from an American model named Kelly Fisher, who claimed she had accepted Fayed's proposal ofmarriage. Fisher dropped the suit after Fayed died.
Meanwhile, according to a new book, Death of a Princess: the Investigation, Diana and Dodi Fayed were planning to be married last fall.
Written by Time magazine correspondents Thomas Sancton and Scott Macleod, the book claims the British Princess and the Egyptian playboy were to be wed in October or November.
The authors quote Frank Klein, manager of Windsor Villa in Paris where the couple were planning to move, saying that Dodi Fayed had told him Princess Diana ``doesn't want to stay in England'' after the couple's Saint-Tropez holiday.
The book, which was excerpted in the February 16 issue of Time magazine, also quotes emergency physicians who claim Princess Diana's life could have been saved with more competent medical care after the August 31 car crash that killed the couple.
Several doctors suggested to the authors that the Princess would have lived if she were rushed to an emergency department rather than having her conditionstabilised by the ambulance staff. Princess Diana was breathing on her own when she arrived at the hospital after the 3.8-mile ambulance trip.
However, her heart stopped soon after she was brought to the hospital, according to the doctors.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
