Friends and family of Diana, Princess of Wales are gathering to mark the 10th anniversary of her death at a service at the Guards' Chapel in London.

Princes William and Harry, who were closely involved in organising the service, welcomed Prince Charles and members of the Spencer family.

The Queen and Prince Philip have arrived to cheers from the crowd.

Guests including Lord Attenborough, Sir Cliff Richard and Mario Testino have taken their places.

The two princes will lead readings for their mother in the service.

Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi died in the crash alongside the princess, laid flowers at a shrine he has built at the London store.

A two-minute silence was also held there.

Guests arriving

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his predecessors Tony Blair and John Major have taken their seats alongside their wives at the Guards' Chapel.

Prince Charles and the Queen will be there, although Charles's second wife Camilla will not be attending.

Sir Elton John, who sang at Diana's funeral, will also pay his respects.

Similar events are to be held at venues across the UK, including Manchester, Bristol, Aberdeen and Cardiff.

The Duchess of Cornwall, who will not be attending the hour-long service at the Guards' Chapel, said in a statement earlier this week that her attendance "could divert attention from the purpose of the occasion".

She said she was grateful to her husband and the princes for supporting her decision not to be there.

The service will include Diana's favourite classical music by composers Rachmaninov and Mozart.

There will be four hymns, concluding with Diana's favourite, I Vow To Thee, My Country, and a reading from her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale.

The service, conducted by the Reverend Patrick Irwin, will also include two prayers written by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and an address will be given by the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Dr Richard Chartres.

Former members of the princess's staff, all of the bridesmaids and page boys from her 1981 wedding, and over 110 representatives of charities and organisations with which she was associated are also on the guest list.

A spokesman for Mr Al Fayed said the Harrods owner's daughter Camilla would attend the service, which he hoped would go "extraordinarily well".

Hundreds of people are also expected to attend the Manchester service - at 1630 BST on Friday - which will include readings, a blessing and music which was played at the princess's funeral.

Staff and representatives from charities and organisations supported by Diana - including Barnado's, the English National Ballet and the National Aids Trust - have been invited to tour her family home at Althorp, near Northampton.

Admirers of the late princess have been tying flowers and cards to the gates of Kensington Palace - her former London residence - as they did in 1997 after her death.

Members of the public have also left bouquets and gifts outside Althorp, where Diana is buried, at the gate of Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where she was born, and near the Eternal Flame monument by the tunnel in Paris where she was killed.

Princess Diana died, aged 36, along with her companion Dodi Al Fayed, 42, and chauffeur Henri Paul, when the Mercedes they were in crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel on 31 August 1997.

The princess's death provoked an unprecedented outpouring of national grief, with hundreds of thousands gathering to mourn outside Kensington Palace, where they left a sea of floral tributes.

Thousands more later lined the route of her funeral procession.

Diana inquest to open as murder theories linger
LONDON (AFP) - The long-delayed inquest into the death of Princess Diana is to open here Tuesday, amid hopes it will at last settle claims of a British establishment murder plot.

Lord Justice Scott Baker and an 11-person jury are expected to spend up to six months at the High Court in London considering evidence surrounding the deaths of Diana and her Egyptian lover Dodi Fayed in a Paris road tunnel in 1997.

In their travels to and from court, the jurors will be under police guard to ensure they are not "hassled or harassed" after Baker pointed out that the couple's deaths have "created worldwide interest on an unprecedented scale."

The double inquest -- legally required when a British citizen dies an unnatural death abroad and the body is repatriated -- has a narrow remit, seeking only the identity of the deceased, plus how, when and where they died.

No blame is determined at inquests and the verdict must not identify anyone as having criminal or civil liability.

Possible verdicts include natural causes, accident, suicide, unlawful or lawful killing or industrial disease. The inquest may also produce an open verdict if there is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion.

Diana, 36, Dodi Fayed, 42, and their chauffeur Henri Paul, 41, were killed on August 31, 1997. Their Mercedes hit an underpass pillar soon after speeding away from the Hotel Ritz, owned by Fayed's father Mohamed Al Fayed.

Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only survivor, but suffered serious injuries.

The judge and jurors are due to visit the crash scene in Paris on October 8 and 9. Witnesses to the crash and possibly paparazzi photographers at the scene are expected to start giving video evidence from France from around October 10.

The inquest will examine the embalming of Diana's body, her post-mortem, the hours before the crash, suggestions she was engaged to Fayed, the alleged purchase of a ring, claims she was pregnant and bodyguards' evidence.

Baker, the third coroner to oversee Diana inquest proceedings, is keen to ensure there is no hint of bias.

To this end, each potential juror received from Justice Baker a list of questions to determine if they have any prejudices, criminal records, mental health problems, or connections which would bar them from the case.

The connections covered potential links to British intelligence agencies like MI5 and MI6.

Authorization for the inquest to resume -- after it opened briefly in January 2004 -- was only given following the completion last year of a police probe into the deaths.

A report from Lord John Stevens, former head of London's Metropolitan Police, ruled out any plot, saying the crash was a "tragic accident" involving a driver under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs.

It echoed the findings of the French police investigation.

Dodi's father Mohamed, the millionaire owner of London department store Harrods, fought long and hard to ensure that the inquests are not influenced by the British establishment which he claims is behind their murders.

Fayed maintains that Diana, whose eldest son William is second-in-line to the throne, was killed in an intelligence plot orchestrated by Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, to prevent her potential marriage to a Muslim.

Despite initial setbacks, his lawyers argued successfully for joint, rather than separate, proceedings that will be held before a jury drawn from members of the public rather than royal courtiers.

But his attempts to have the queen and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, questioned were thrown out by the coroner, who nonetheless said he would keep the prospect under review.

The inquests will be held every week from Monday to Thursday and the proceedings can be followed on the website http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk.

Princess Diana inquest focuses on crash

LONDON - The British inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and her companion focused quickly on a summer romance that ended in a horrific car crash.

Lord Justice Scott Baker told the six women and five men selected for the jury on Tuesday that they must decide whether the deaths were an accident or — as the father of her companion Dodi Fayed contends — a murder orchestrated by Prince Philip and carried out by Britain's secret services.

"You will be in the public eye as no inquest jury has ever been before," said Baker, who is acting as coroner. The inquest is planned to last no more than six months.

As proceedings began, fewer than a fourth of the seats reserved for the public were taken.

Opening a decade after the couple and their chauffeur died, the inquest had to wait for French authorities to complete their inquiries and court proceedings, then for the London's Metropolitan Police to complete their investigation.

The French authorities and the Metropolitan Police agree basically that chauffeur Henri Paul had too much to drink, the car was going too fast, and that the crash in the Pont d'Alma tunnel was an accident.

Fayed's father, Mohamed al Fayed, disagrees. "I believe my son and Princess Diana have been murdered by the royal family," he said outside court.

Paul died along with Diana, 36, and Fayed, 42; bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the sole survivor.

In his opening statement to the jury, Baker recapped the couple's relationship, which developed after July 14, 1997, when Diana was staying in the French resort of St. Tropez as al Fayed's guest; Dodi Fayed arrived later in the day and his girlfriend, Kelly Fisher, joined him two days later.

All parties to the case agree that Diana and Dodi Fayed did not have a serious relationship before then.

Baker said a remark Diana made to journalists on July 14, that "you're going to get a big surprise," preceded Fayed's arrival, as did a photograph of her in a swimsuit, which some have said showed an early pregnancy.

Al Fayed has claimed that Diana was pregnant with Dodi Fayed's child when she died, and that the couple had planned to announce their engagement on Sept. 1.

Their relationship did develop rapidly and the couple spent time together — though not continuously — in Paris, in Nice and aboard a yacht in the next six weeks.

Baker told jurors that al Fayed and other people in contact with Dodi Fayed at the end of August believed an engagement was imminent; people in touch with Diana thought not.

Turning to the fatal drive from the Ritz hotel starting at 12:20 a.m. on Aug. 31, Baker said the jury would have to consider whether Paul was intoxicated, why he took a peculiar route toward Fayed's flat, why he lost control of the speeding car, and whether anyone could organize a murder in the circumstances.

The decision for Paul to meet the couple at the rear entrance of the hotel apparently was made at the last minute in the hope of eluding paparazzi clustered around the front entrance. Al Fayed has said he urged Dodi to stay at the Ritz, but that his son wanted to return to his flat to present an engagement ring to Diana.

Had Paul followed the route that most professional drivers would have taken, "then any conspiracy to do murder in the tunnel would have been certain to fail," Baker said.

In a witness statement, al Fayed claimed that Paul was a paid agent of British and French secret services, that he was paid the equivalent of $4,000 to orchestrate the arrangements for taking the couple out of the back entrance of the Ritz, and that a post-mortem that determined that Paul was drunk had been fabricated, Baker said.

He indicated that the jury will also consider allegations that French medics might have saved Diana had she been taken to a nearer hospital, or been taken directly to a hospital rather than being treated at the scene as is the policy in France.

Baker said an expert he commissioned concluded that it was unlikely that Diana, who died from a ruptured pulmonary artery, could have been saved, and that the hospital where she was taken was best equipped to deal with multiple injuries.

A coroner's inquest has no authority to blame any individual for a death. The jury's role is to determine who died, when and where, and — the crux of this inquest — how.

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On the Net:

Inquest, http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk

Mohamed al Fayed, http://www.alfayed.com

Pictures record Diana's last hours
LONDON - A photograph captures the scene inside the car minutes before the crash that killed Princess Diana. The driver has a glazed look as a body guard tries to wave away pursuing paparazzi. Diana's head is turned away, toward the back windshield.

This and other fleeting images are giving a coroner's jury a picture of the last hours of the princess and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed — hours filled with shopping for a ring, vainly seeking privacy and finally dying as they fled from the paparazzi.

On Wednesday, inquest jurors saw security camera videos of the couple arriving at the Ritz Hotel on Aug. 30, 1997. The images show Fayed leaving for a short car ride across the Place Vendome to Repossi jewelers, then returning a short time later with a brochure. Ritz executive Claude Roulet is seen with what was described as a bag of rings from Repossi's "dis moi oui" (tell me yes) line.

Whether Diana and Fayed planned to announce their engagement the next day is one of the questions before the jury, as is the claim that she was pregnant with Fayed's child. Both claims are part of Mohamed al Fayed's insistence that the couple were the victims of an Establishment plot directed by Prince Philip, the queen's husband.

Shots of two people standing in an elevator may tell you nothing about how they came to die in a car crash hours later. But the images of photographers swarming around their car during the day help explain the apparently hasty change of plans that led the couple to flee from the rear entrance of the hotel shortly after midnight.

The videos shown to the jury were taken from 31 of the 43 security cameras at the Ritz, said Inspector Paul Carpenter, who was part of Metropolitan Police investigative team headed by former chief John Stevens. That team laid the blame for the crash on driver Henri Paul, concluding that he was far over the legal limit for alcohol and driving too fast. Paul also died in the crash.

Many of the images are fuzzy. Diana, one of the world's most photographed women, isn't always instantly recognizable.

Two photos shown to the inquest on Tuesday, taken by French photographer Jacques Langevin, apparently are the last taken of Diana before the crash — though only her hair is visible.

The time is 12:20 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1997. About 10 minutes later the Mercedes had slammed into a pillar in the Pont d'Alma tunnel.

Langevin was prosecuted for invasion of privacy for taking two photos of the couple leaving the Ritz, and he and two other photographers faced the same charge for taking pictures of the car shortly after it crashed.

Langevin was acquitted of the charge involving the Ritz photos.

Following a series of appeals, Langevin, Christian Martinez and Fabrice Chassery were fined $1.42 each by a Paris appeals court for the tunnel photos.

Introducing Langevin's photos to the jury, Lord Justice Scott Baker, who is presiding as coroner, said one of Langevin's pictures — the one of Diana with her head turned toward the back windshield — had become very well known. He said the photo was taken as the car pulled out of the Ritz.

"This photograph became well known because it was often misdescribed," Baker said.

"Repeatedly it was suggested that the photograph was taken as the car was entering the Alma Underpass, either by a paparazzo or by a speed camera. That is not so."

"This photograph was on the film taken (confiscated) by the French police from Monsieur Langevin and it was identified by him as having been taken as the couple left the Ritz," Baker said.

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On the Net:

Inquest: http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk

Mohamed al Fayed: http://www.alfayed.com