"It was Hasnat," Burrell told ABC interviewer Barbara Walters in an interview to be broadcast Friday.

Asked whether Diana had wanted to marry Khan, with whom she had a relationship before Fayed, Burrell responded: "She wanted desperately to, yes."

Burrell, once described by Diana as her "rock", has written a book about his time working for the princess. Excerpts serialised in a British newspaper ahead of publication next week have triggered headlines with revelations that Diana believed there was a plot to kill her.

Diana and Dodi Fayed died in a car crash in a Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.

The princess met Fayed after her relationship with Khan, which Burrell said the surgeon had broken off.

"They were two very like-minded people ...two people who wanted to go out into the world and help others ...two humanitarians," Burrell said in the interview.

"I think there were too many complications on both sides," he added. "The princess always said she came with a lot of baggage."

Diana met Dodi Fayed shortly after but Burrell indicated that the princess had no intention of marrying him. "She said she needed a marriage like a bad rash."

Princess had nine suitors but didn't want another marriage: Butler

After her divorce, Princess Diana had nine suitors, including a famous politician and a Hollywood actor, but said she didn't need another marriage, a tabloid newspaper reported Friday. The princess certainly did not want to marry her final companion Dodi Fayed, says Diana's former butler Paul Burrell in "A Royal Duty," his forthcoming memoir, according to excerpts in the Daily Mirror tabloid.

In Friday's installment, Burrell dismissed what he calls "two ludicrous claims: that she and Dodi were going to get married and that she was pregnant."

"The monstrous suggestion of pregnancy is not true," Burrell says. The former butler says Fayed might have told his friends he was going to ask her to marry him, "but the princess was in no mood to accept."

According to the excerpt, Diana worried that Fayed was going to propose, and asked Burrell what she should do if he gave her a ring. "I need another marriage like I want a bad rash," Diana is quoted as saying.

Diana and Fayed died together in a high-speed car crash Aug. 31, 1997 in Paris.

Burrell does not identify any of Diana's nine suitors but says she was not interested in most of them.

"The unfortunate thing was that while they might have provided the princess with enthralling company, her heart lay elsewhere." In an interview on ABC's "20/20" program in the United States, being broadcast Friday, Burrell says Diana was in love with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, whom she met when she visited a heart transplant patient at Brompton Hospital in London. Burrell says Khan eventually broke off their relationship. "I think there were too many complications on both sides," Burrell said, according to a transcript of the interview released Thursday. Earlier excerpts of Burrell's book, which is to be published next week, included letters to Diana from her father-in-law Prince Philip - one stating he "never dreamed" Charles would leave Diana for Parker Bowles.

In another letter Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, said that "I pray you're getting treatment for your mental problems." The royal family, reportedly angry over Burrell's revelations, has asked for and received sections of the book from its publisher. The Daily Mirror also published a letter, allegedly written by Diana 10 months before her fatal crash, saying someone was planning "an accident in my car ... in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry."

After the letter was printed, Mohammed Al Fayed - father of Dodi Fayed - called for a public inquiry into the deaths. The British government rejected that call, although a coroner's inquest will be held once legal processes in France have been completed. The car's driver, Henri Paul, also died in the crash. A French judge ruled that Paul's use of drugs and alcohol, and the car's high speed, caused the accident.

(AFP/AP)