LONDON: Britain's Prince Harry and his Zimbabwean girlfriend Chelsy Davy have split up.

The News of the World and the Mail on Sunday said Chelsy, 22, had told friends she and the prince were having a trial separation.

"She kept saying she needed to take some time out to re-establish herself. She still loves him but she feels she needs to carve an identity as her own person rather than as Prince Harry's girlfriend," the Mail quoted a friend as saying.

"Chelsy just couldn't put up with his antics anymore," a friend told the News of the World, which said that Harry's decision to attend a rugby match instead of her birthday had persuaded Chelsy to break off the relationship.

A spokeswoman for the royal family said it would not comment on the prince's private life.

Harry, a second lieutenant in the Household Cavalry, has been described as disappointed and debating whether to quit the army after being told he could not deploy with his unit to Afghanistan.

Earlier this year he was kept home when his unit was sent to Iraq. Generals had initially said they would send him, but changed their minds because the deployment would put other troops in danger.

Chief of Defence Staff Sir Jock Stirrup acknowledged that those decisions may have been difficult for the prince.

"I'm not in a position to speak for him on what his future intentions are. What I will say is I greatly sympathise with him," Stirrup told BBC talk show host Andrew Marr yesterday.

"We have an organisation that is very much based around the team, team spirit and team ethos, and so when the team is involved everybody wants to be involved. And so I understand his disappointment absolutely, and I do sympathise with it."

Prince Harry's social life made headlines earlier this year in Canada, when he was spotted at a Calgary nightclub flirting with and kissing a waitress, Cherie Cymbalisty. He had been in Alberta to take part in military exercises at CFB Suffield in the province's southeast.