Women swoon as Harry begins US tour
Women use their cellphones to take pictures of Prince Harry as he tours the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington on Thur
Britain’s Prince Harry broke hearts in Washington’s corridors of power on Thursday, showing more interest in landmines than in the excited fans who greeted him at the start of a week-long US visit.
Squeals ricocheted down the halls of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill as the 28-year-old eligible 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 giddy posse of twentysomethings as he chatted with Senator John McCain, 76, a Vietnam war veteran whose wife Cindy is a Halo board member.
There were no public remarks, but Harry was overheard inquiring about the price of mine detectors when he cast an eye over mannequins in cobalt blue outfits combing the polished marble floor for imaginary unexploded ordnance.
Harry is the honorary fundraising patron of Halo, 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 chief executive Guy Willoughby, who also conversed 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. US is the only NATO member state not to sign the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning landmines, but since the late 1990s, it has contributed $150m to support Halo’s work.
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