London - Remarks by accident-prone Prince Harry about a fellow soldier he called "our little Paki friend" have reignited a wider debate about racism in the armed forces and the parlous state of ethnic recruitment in Britain's professional army. Keith Vaz, one of the few Asian Labour members of parliament (MPs) in London, said Monday that, while he was not suspecting the prince to be a racist, he nonetheless believed that his remark "revealed a wider culture in the army where words of this kind are acceptable."
Vaz also asked whether Prince Harry's controversial remarks, made about fellow Sandhurst officer cadet Ahmed Raza Khan in 2006, were perhaps an explanation "as to why we have so few ethnic minority people prepared to join institutions like the army."
Harry, 24, has issued an apology, saying that no malice was intended in the use of the term, which he realised "might cause offence."
In fact, the prince and Khan were good friends during their officer training course at Sandhurst military academy, and Khan never complained about the incident exposed by a British tabloid newspaper which got hold of a private video shot by Harry three years ago.
While fellow officer Khan, who is now believed to be serving in the army in Pakistan, maintained his silence over the affair Monday, his father condemned the use by Prince Harry of the "hate word."
"When I saw the video I was very, very hurt," Muhammad Yaqoob Khan Abbasi told Britain's Daily Mail.
"That word he used is a hate word and should never be used against any Pakistani," said Abbasi, described by the paper as a former vice president of Pakistan's Muslim Commercial Bank.
He demanded that Prince Harry should apologize "to the Pakistani army and the Pakistani people."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, said he believed Harry knew that he made a "mistake" and that he realized that the remark was "unacceptable."
"I think the British people are good enough to give someone who has actually been a role model for young people and has done well fighting for our country, gone into very difficult situations with bravery, I think they will give him the benefit of the doubt," said Brown.
Prince Harry served for nine weeks in Afghanistan until his secret assignment was exposed by the media in early 2008 and he was called back home because of the security risk.
But Vaz said there could be no excuse for Harry's conduct.
"We cannot use language of this kind, even in jest," he said. Harry was a role model and "not an understudy for Bernard Manning," added Vaz in a reference to the popular TV series Dad's Army.
However, there are those who believe that Harry's faux-pas has been blown out of all proportion.
Conservative Rod Richards, who served as an officer in the Royal Marines, said he regarded "Paki" as an abbreviation and he himself had been frequently teased in the army on account of his Welsh background.
"Well it's true, the sort of language Prince Harry voices on the notorious video is occasionally used wherever soldiers gather. I have overheard it, from Catterick to Kandahar," Geoff Meade, the defence correspondent for Sky television, said Monday.
But such terms were often used "with overt offence apparently neither intended nor taken," said Meade.
"For sure, there will be racists among the ranks. But only to the extent that there are bigots in wider society. The armed forces reflect us all and mirror attitudes found across the country they defend," he added.
However, the third in line to the throne should know that the word "Paki" deserved "no place in the royal vocabulary," said Meade.
In Afghanistan, where scores of British lives were currently being lost, the "casual use of expressions capable of deep offence will be read by many as symptomatic of underlying contempt for those his comrades are dying for," he added.
The British military's official doctrine on racism is "to recognize the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nature of today's society. It is committed to confront racism and other prejudices wherever they occur".
The timing of the publication of Prince Harry's remarks is most unfortunate for Britain's armed forces, who have been struggling to meet recruitment targets as more people leave than sign up.
Figures show that just 10,000 of Britain's 200,000 soldiers are from ethnic minorities, and only a few hundred of them are Muslims.
According to Ministry of Defence statistics, ethnic minorities accounted for 6.2 per cent of Britain's regular armed forces in 2008, compared with 5.9 per cent the year before.
