London: One of Diana's close friends, with whom the Princess of Wales allegedly discussed marriage a day before she was killed in a car crash in Paris ten years back, is due to testify at her inquest later this week.

Lady Annabel Goldsmith is likely to questioned by the jury whether Diana was ready to get married to her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed who was also killed in the tragedy in the Alma tunnel on Aug 31,1997, The Daily Telegraph reported today.

The Princess was not only close to the socialite but also to her daughter, Jemima Khan, and had even visited them in Pakistan the year she died in the car crash. Lady Annabel had telephoned the Princess the day before she died after seeing photographs in newspapers of her and Dodi together in the south of France.

"You're not doing anything silly like getting married?" she had asked Diana. "Annabel, I need marriage like a rash on the face," the Princess was said to have replied.

Last week, the jurors were shown letters exchanged between Diana and Dodi shortly before their deaths. In one mail, beginning "Darling Dodi", she thanked him for "bringing such joy into this chick's life". The letters were released by Dodi's father Mohamed Al Fayed, who claims that the couple were killed by the British secret service as they were about to get married. He also insisted that Diana was pregnant with Dodi's child.

Last month, Franz Klein, the President of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, told the inquest that Dodi had told him about his plans to get married to the Princess of Wales in 1997 and settle in the French capital.

Source : PTI