The judge investigating the death of Princess Diana said yesterday she had not seen "a shred of evidence" to back claims that the former wife of the British heir-to-the-throne had been murdered.

Coroner Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was responding to a request from lawyers representing Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi died alongside Diana in a Paris car crash 10 years ago, to delay a long awaited inquest into the their deaths.

Fayed, the multimillionaire owner of the luxury Harrods department store, has long argued that the couple were deliberately killed as part of an elaborate plot hatched by British security services.

"If there is no evidence to support (the allegations), I shall not present them to the jury," said Butler-Sloss at a preliminary hearing at London's High Court.

A three-year British police investigation ruled at the end of last year that the crash was an accident.

The British inquiry backed a French probe which concluded that the driver, a Fayed employee, was to blame because he was drunk, under the influence of anti-depressants and driving too fast. Fayed has rejected both British and French findings.

Last week he won a major legal challenge after High Court judges ruled that the inquest should be heard before a jury and not Butler-Sloss sitting alone.

Fayed's lawyer Michael Mansfield argued that the full inquest should be delayed from May until October 1 to give him time to pore over reports and experts' opinions.

However Butler-Sloss said she was reluctant to do so for risk of upsetting Diana's two sons, Princes William and Harry.

Fayed lawyers are expected to call for Diana's ex-husband Prince Charles and her ex-father-in-law the Duke of Edinburgh as witnesses during the inquest, a move likely to be strongly resisted by lawyers for the royal family.

If they do have to take the stand, that could rival the media frenzy that surrounded the trials in the United States of Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson.

Source: China Daily/agencies