Pregnant? Diana was on Pill

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, told the jury it was probably no longer possible to prove scientifically if she was pregnant.

But he said the Princess had given no indication of an impending child to any family friends or associates.

There was also evidence that Diana was on a contraceptive pill at the time.

The inquest at the High Court is to determine why Diana and Dodi Fayed died in Paris on 31 August 1997. Their driver Henri Paul was also killed. It follows a long-running campaign by Dodi's father, Harrods' owner Mohamed Fayed, for a full inquiry into the deaths and is scheduled to last up to six months.

Mr Fayed claims the Princess told him in a phone call, which he believes was monitored by MI6, she was pregnant with Dodi's child.

The coroner said: "It may be that Mr Fayed's original position that Dodi and Diana were to be engaged and she was expecting his child has changed to one in which even if she was not engaged and/or pregnant, those monitoring her movements may have believed that to have been the case - we shall have to wait and see."

Earlier, the coroner raised questions about claims that the princess and Dodi Fayed had chosen an engagement ring.

The claim that they were about to announce plans to marry is at the heart of Mr Fayed's allegation that MI6 was ordered to murder the couple.

Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury that "a ring" was collected by Dodi from jewellers in Paris hours before he died. It was gold with diamonds in the shape of a star from Repossi's Tell Me Yes range and was retrieved by his butler after the car crash.

But the coroner added: "The question is: was it in truth an engagement ring chosen by Diana and Dodi and collected by Dodi or a ring chosen by Dodi alone that day to give to Diana that night, perhaps in the hope that she would agree to marry him or perhaps as a present?

"You will have to consider carefully whether the evidence supports Mr Fayed's view."

The Harrods' boss says the couple had chosen a specific engagement ring together in Monte Carlo on holiday and that it was sent to Italy to be sized and was then collected by Dodi from Repossi's in the Place Vendôme.

But the coroner said the only opportunities to visit the Monte Carlo jeweller were on 5 and 23 August 1997 and the couple's bodyguards say that could not have happened.

Dodi Fayed's butler, Rene Delorm, believed there was an opportunity on 5 August but the coroner told the jury: "You will have to consider that that would have been very early in the couple's relationship and you will have to bear in mind whether Dodi and Diana had engagement in mind at that stage. Delorm never mentioned this visit in the book he wrote because he says he didn't remember until afterwards."

CCTV shows Dodi visiting Repossi on the day he died for about seven and a half minutes, appearing to be carrying one of the jeweller's brochures.

Claude Roulet, assistant to the president of the Paris Ritz, says Dodi viewed a number of items of jewellery and left without buying any of them. Roulet goes on to say he himself returned later that day to collect a number of rings for Dodi to consider from the Tell me Yes range.

The coroner said that just days after the crash Mohamed Fayed's spokesman told a press conference about the ring, saying "what that ring meant we shall probably never know." The coroner said: "That's a very different picture from the one later painted by Mr Fayed."