Fresh royal wedding glitch as reporter sneaks fake bomb into castle
 

Yet another gremlin has gatecrashed the planning for Saturday's wedding of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles, this time in the form of an undercover reporter taking a make-believe bomb into one of the venues to expose security flaws. In a brazen stunt, a journalist from The Sun newspaper, posing as a delivery man, breezed into Windsor Castle and drove around the grounds freely in a rented white van. Inside the van was a brown box cheekily marked "bomb", yet reporter Alex Peake said none of the police officers guarding the castle, just west of London -- where Queen Elizabeth II was in residence at the time -- were suspicious. "It was all absurdly easy... Had it (the fake bomb) been real, it could have devastated the castle and caused carnage -- even killing the queen," Peake reported.

Mounted police pass Windsor Castle. An undercover reporter gatecrashed the planning for Saturday's wedding of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles by taking a make-believe bomb into one of the venues to expose security flaws.

London's Metropolitan Police, responsible for guarding the royal family, launched an "immediate inquiry" into the embarrassing breakdown in security, the second at Windsor Castle within two years.

"I am concerned. I am certainly irritated," said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who revealed that one officer, who was not identified, had been "moved" to other duties.

"I do not want to prejudge this because we have a disciplinary process to go through, but it looks as though somebody has done something pretty stupid."
"Perhaps it is a wake-up call, but I would not expect anyone in my organisation to need a wake-up call."

The Ford van, with the Thrifty rent-a-car logo on its side, recalled the one that Timothy McVeigh used in the April 1995 bombing of the US federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and injured more than 500.

Charles, heir to the British throne, and Parker Bowles, his longtime partner, will wed this Saturday in a civil ceremony at Windsor's 17th century Guildhall, a stone's throw from Windsor Castle.

They will then return to the rambling hilltop castle, first for their marriage to be blessed in St George's Chapel, and then for a private reception with several hundred guests.

The nuptials were supposed to be on Friday, but were hastily rescheduled this week to enable Charles to represent his mother at Pope John Paul II's funeral at the Vatican on Friday.

The wedding is the second for both the Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles, who is blamed by many for the break-up of Charles' marriage to the glamorous Princess Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in August 1997.

Their plans have been dogged by an almost comical series of gaffes, starting with the rushed announcement of their engagement on February 10, several days earlier than intended on account of a newspaper getting wind of the news.

Plans to hold the civil wedding ceremony inside Windsor Castle were dropped after it emerged that, under English law, commoners would have automatically enjoyed the right to marry there, too, for the next three years.

Queen Elizabeth, meanwhile, decided not to attend the wedding, officially so as to keep the event low-key, although many speculated that it was a sign of her disapproval.

Meanwhile, Camilla's status once Charles succeeds his mother has been a subject of debate, with the government saying that she will officially be queen, while courtiers insist that she does not want to hold the title.

Until Thursday there had been little worry, in public, about security for the wedding, which has aroused minimal enthusiasm in Britain and is expected to draw only a few thousand well-wishers to Windsor's streets.

Security at the castle was famously breached in June 2003 when self-styled "comedy terrorist" Aaron Barschak gatecrashed a costume party for the 21st birthday of Charles's eldest son, Prince William.

There was renewed concern back in London soon afterwards when a fathers' rights activist climbed onto a ledge at the front of Buckingham Palace, the queen's official residence, dressed as Batman.

--AFP