Ladies swoon as Prince Harry begins US tour

WASHINGTON: Young women swooned in Washington’s corridors of power Thursday as Britain’s Prince Harry began a week-long tour of the United States clearly showing more interest in landmines.

Squeals echoed through the halls of the Russell Senate office building on Capitol Hill as the 28-year-old bachelor inspected a photo exhibit set up by the Halo Trust, a charity favored by his late mother Princess Diana.

Harry, a British army officer in Afghanistan, ignored the giggly twentysomethings as he chatted with Senator John McCain, 76, a Vietnam war veteran whose wife Cindy McCain is a Halo Trust board member.

There were no public remarks, but Harry was overheard asking about the price of mine detectors when he cast an eye over a pair of mannequins in cobalt blue outfits combing the polished marble floor for imaginary unexploded ordnance.

Harry is the honorary fund-raising patron of the Halo Trust, the world’s biggest demining organization, which since its founding 25 years ago has unearthed more than 1.4 million landmines in 9,800 minefields around the world.

“He’s very much tuned in to the landmine issue,” said Halo Trust chief executive Guy Willoughby, who also spoke with Harry at the exhibit aptly installed outside the Senate armed services committee hearing room.

Diana famously toured minefields cleared by Halo teams in Angola shortly before her death in a Paris car crash in August 1997, a year after her stormy divorce from Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.

The United States is the only NATO member state not to sign the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning landmines, but since President Bill Clinton’s administration it has contributed $150 million to support the Halo Trust’s work.

“The commitment of the American government to fund humanitarian mine clearance far, far, far outweighs the political niceties about whether they have or have not signed the Ottawa treaty,” Willoughby told AFP.

If funding levels are sustained, he added, it would be possible to clear virtually every minefield in every erstwhile combat zone in Africa and Asia in the next five to 10 years.

A State Department official said Washington is “the world’s single largest financial supporter of demining and conventional weapons destruction,” even as it pursues “an ongoing policy review” on whether to adopt the Ottawa treaty.

“Since 1993, we have delivered over $2 billion in more than 90 countries for mine clearance, survivor assistance, mine risk education, and the research and development of new demining technologies,” the official told AFP.

Harry paid a surprise visit Thursday to the White House where First Lady Michelle Obama offered him afternoon tea in the company of American military veterans.

“He has a very busy schedule, but when he heard about this tea and all of you … he wanted to be here to personally thank you for your service,” she said as Harry kept a polite silence.

Harry is on his best behavior after photos of the party-loving prince in a Las Vegas hotel suite — totally naked, with hands cupped over his crown jewels — spilled onto the Internet last August.

His official schedule in Washington also included a dinner Thursday at the British ambassador’s residence — with roasted veal and a salad of scallops on the menu — and a solemn wreath-laying Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.

From the US capital, he’ll proceed to Colorado to open the Warrior Games for wounded military personnel, then go on to New Jersey to see first-hand the damage inflicted on the Atlantic coast state by superstorm Sandy last October.