Gumleaf
February 28th, 2008, 07:30 PM
Friday Feb 29 10:00 AEDT
By Erin Tennant
ninemsn
Australian magazine New Idea formed a key part of the media leak that has compromised Prince Harry's secret deployment in Afghanistan.
New Idea was one of the first publications in the world to reveal the Prince's tour of duty, a move which has prompted UK military officials to consider pulling the royal out of Afghanistan for safety reasons.
New Idea said in a statement it had no idea any such media embargo existed and would never have knowingly broken it.
By 10am today the gossip magazine had pulled the story from its website.
The news spread around the world earlier after US website Drudge Report posted its own story online, but cited New Idea and the German tabloid Bild as the first to break the embargo.
The source behind New Idea's January 7 story is given as a "close friend" of Prince Harry who attended a farewell dinner for the royal.
"Harry found members of his unit were to be posted in Afghanistan for a four-month tour of duty over Christmas and the New Year," New Idea quotes the friend as saying.
"He had already begrudgingly accepted the decision to keep him off the front line in Iraq, but when he heard about the mission in Afghanistan he was insistent he would not stay at home eating Christmas dinner and living it up at the palace while his men were on the front line."
The gossip magazine claimed the prince even threatened to resign his commission and serve as a private if he was prevented from serving.
It has now emerged the 23-year-old prince, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, has spent the past 10 weeks secretly serving in the volatile southern province of Helmand, where most of Britain's troops are based.
Harry has been responsible for calling in air strikes against Taliban positions, has conducted foot patrols through local villages and has fired on suspected enemy combatants, pool photographs and footage have shown.
His deployment makes him the first British royal to be sent on active military service in nearly 26 years, when his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew Royal Navy helicopters during the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982.
The UK Ministry of Defence had kept the young royal's deployment secret under a news blackout agreed by British media to prevent details reaching insurgents and endangering the prince and his comrades.
As part of the deal a group of journalists visited the prince in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand on condition that details would only be publicised once he was safely back in Britain.
The British Army's most senior officer, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, slammed the premature publication of the deployment.
"I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us," he said.
"Now that the story is in the public domain, the Chief of Defence Staff and I will take advice from the operational commanders about whether his deployment can continue."
By Erin Tennant
ninemsn
Australian magazine New Idea formed a key part of the media leak that has compromised Prince Harry's secret deployment in Afghanistan.
New Idea was one of the first publications in the world to reveal the Prince's tour of duty, a move which has prompted UK military officials to consider pulling the royal out of Afghanistan for safety reasons.
New Idea said in a statement it had no idea any such media embargo existed and would never have knowingly broken it.
By 10am today the gossip magazine had pulled the story from its website.
The news spread around the world earlier after US website Drudge Report posted its own story online, but cited New Idea and the German tabloid Bild as the first to break the embargo.
The source behind New Idea's January 7 story is given as a "close friend" of Prince Harry who attended a farewell dinner for the royal.
"Harry found members of his unit were to be posted in Afghanistan for a four-month tour of duty over Christmas and the New Year," New Idea quotes the friend as saying.
"He had already begrudgingly accepted the decision to keep him off the front line in Iraq, but when he heard about the mission in Afghanistan he was insistent he would not stay at home eating Christmas dinner and living it up at the palace while his men were on the front line."
The gossip magazine claimed the prince even threatened to resign his commission and serve as a private if he was prevented from serving.
It has now emerged the 23-year-old prince, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, has spent the past 10 weeks secretly serving in the volatile southern province of Helmand, where most of Britain's troops are based.
Harry has been responsible for calling in air strikes against Taliban positions, has conducted foot patrols through local villages and has fired on suspected enemy combatants, pool photographs and footage have shown.
His deployment makes him the first British royal to be sent on active military service in nearly 26 years, when his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew Royal Navy helicopters during the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982.
The UK Ministry of Defence had kept the young royal's deployment secret under a news blackout agreed by British media to prevent details reaching insurgents and endangering the prince and his comrades.
As part of the deal a group of journalists visited the prince in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand on condition that details would only be publicised once he was safely back in Britain.
The British Army's most senior officer, Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, slammed the premature publication of the deployment.
"I am very disappointed that foreign websites have decided to run this story without consulting us," he said.
"Now that the story is in the public domain, the Chief of Defence Staff and I will take advice from the operational commanders about whether his deployment can continue."