Diana, Princess of Wales, loved Dodi Fayed for his generosity, manliness and kindness, Fayed's half-sister said yesterday.
''He did not view her as a princess, but he saw in her a woman he loved and wanted to marry,'' Joumana Yassin said in a phone call from Cairo.
Yassin refused to confirm a report in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar Al Yom that quoted her as saying Dodi had told her Diana and he planned to marry next month.
However, she said that Fayed, who had a reputation as a playboy, had found in the princess the love he had been searching for all his life.
Yassin said her brother did not usually write poetry, but his immense love for Diana must have led him to write the poem he inscribed for her on a silver plate.
Dodi Fayed was Diana's first serious boyfriend after her divorce from Prince Charles last year.
''She had fame and wealth. She loved my brother's manliness and his Middle Eastern behaviour, his Arab generosity and goodness of heart,'' said Yassin, who met the princess briefly.
The mother of Joumana and Dodi was Samira Khashoggi, the first wife of Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed.
Khashoggi and Al Fayed divorced after the birth of Dodi, and Samira married Anas Yassin, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States, by whom she had Joumana. Khashoggi died of a heart attack in 1986.
Yassin's uncle, Hassan Yassin, said that he had asked Dodi Fayed about Princess Diana when he spoke to him six hours before the crash.
''He was very happy and very much in love. He used to wine and dine many women before he met Diana. But he told me this was different. He was serious and wanted to marry her,'' Hassan Yassin said by from Saudi Arabia.
''He told me that it was not just the title, she had the manners of a princess,'' he said.
Joumana Yassin said Dodi Fayed was a supportive half-brother who was always by her side. ''He was always there for me, giving me advice when-
ever I needed it,'' she said.
He was also a warm and loving uncle to her two sons. ''They asked many questions after the fatal accident and were greatly affected by his sudden and tragic death,'' she added.
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