Prince may try to block tapes

Press, 7 May 1981, Page 1

Prince may try to block tapes

NZPA London Prince Charles may take legal action to block publication in Germany of alleged tapped telephone conversations with Lady Diana Spencer and the Queen. But a German magazine said yesterday that it would almost certainly publish the transcripts if they were proved to be genuine. A spokesman for the Queen said she would be distressed and angry, particularly if any British newspaper published details- of the conversations. Simon Regan, the journalist who says he was given the tapes by Australian republicans, said Fleet Street tabloid newspapers were “queueing up” to buy them. Speculation that Prince Charles might take legal action was fuelled when Buckingham Palace disclosed that his office had been in touch with the British Embassy in Bonn. Embassy officials were “urgently exploring” the possibility of seeking an injunction in a West German court to block publication. Alistair Hunter, political section head at the- Bonn Embassy Said: “As I understand it, an injunction would prohibit publication.” But in Munich, the editor of the magazine. “Die Aktuelle,” Patrick Engels, said: “If the material turns out to be genuine, we will, with 90 per cent certainty, publish-it.”

The West German Press Council warned the magazine againstfpublishing the transcripts and has advised the British Embassy what action it could take, its secretary-general (Mr Egon von Mauchenheim) said. There was nothing in

the transcripts that would cause the Prince and Lady Diana “even momentary embarrassment,” according to a report in the “Daily Mail” yesterday. “In fact, they contain nothing which- even the most sensitive Australianrepublican could have, reason to object to. There is a mild, off-the-cuff observation about the Australian Prime Minister Mr Malcolm Fraser. There is a remark, about one of the Prince’s engagements which shows great sensibility to Australian feeling rather than the contrary. “The rest is the kind of guarded conversation and chat which one? would expect from any engaged couple grappling with the problem of trying to convey feelings through the impersonal device of a telephone line.” In Sydney, Australianrepublican sources said the tapes were more than likely a hoax. They told NZPA they were highly sceptical of Mr Regan’s assertion that he had obtained the tapes from republicans he had met at a Sydney meeting. “I’ve been checking around the traps for two days, and I haven’t been able to find anyone in the movement who has even heard of Regan, let alone been at a meeting with him,” one prominent republican said. In Auckland, Sir Thaddeus . McCarthy, chairman of the Press Council, said, “I have no doubt.that if there was, as the' facts might seem, an unauthorised and improper invasion of the privacy of telephone conversations, the New Zealand Press Council would condemn, any publication of what, was heard or recorded as unjustifiable and unethical.” i .