Fountain to honour Princess Diana

Diana's friend Rosa Monckton (left) with Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell at the fountain's site

LONDON, England -- Diana, Princess of Wales is to have a £3 million fountain built in her memory near the home where she spent the final years of her life.

Architects, engineers and artists will be invited to enter a competition to design the fountain -- which will not feature a statute of the princess.

It is planned to have the water feature working in Hyde Park, central London, by the summer of 2003, the Government announced on Friday.

Diana's friend Rosa Monckton told the UK's Press Association news agency that the princess used to pass the site -- a former pumphouse -- on the edge of the Serpentine lake near Kensington Palace.

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"Diana liked to walk here and I think she would have approved of the location," said Ms Monckton, who heads a memorial fountain committee.

Diana's brother Earl Spencer has endorsed the plan to honour the Princess.

The fountain is the latest initiative by the Diana Memorial Committee and is on the route of a seven-mile landscaped memorial walk through the Royal Parks opened last year.

Diana, divorced from the Prince of Wales, Britain's heir to the throne, was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. She would have turned 40 on Sunday.

The cost of the fountain will be met by public funding including the proceeds of sale of official commemorative coins.