Dubai opened the world's tallest skyscraper Monday, and in a surprise move renamed the gleaming glass-and-metal tower Burj Khalifa in honor of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, the ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi which came to its rescue during the financial meltdown. Blazing fireworks rippled up and down the glistening massive structure of concrete, glass and steel pinnacle rising 828 meters (2,717 feet) after it was officially opened by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed Al-Maktoum. Abu Dhabi provided direct and indirect injections totaling $25 billion last year as Dubai's debt problems deepened. “Today the United Arab Emirates achieves the tallest building ever created by the hand of man... and this great project deserves to carry the name of a great man. Today I inaugurate Burj Khalifa,” Sheikh Mohammad said. Parachutists bearing the UAE colors of red, green, black and white then touched down as a giant portrait of Sheikh Khalifa was projected on an outer wall of the structure which cost $1.5 billion to erect. In the fireworks spectacle that followed, blossoms of flames crackled up and down the huge building and out into the Dubai night sky, followed later by lasers sweeping the horizon from the tower's many levels. Dubai hopes the opening of the Burj Khalifa -the latest in a series of grandiose projects - will burnish an image tarnished by its crippling debt woes. The needle-shaped tower, described by its developer as a “vertical city” as it dwarfs existing skyscrapers, boasts new limits in design and construction. Emaar Properties, the partly government-owned developer, had maintained the suspense about the skyscraper's final height, saying only that it exceeded 800 meters (2,625 feet). The construction of the tower, which began in 2004, “cost $1.5 billion,” Emaar chairman Mohammed Alabbar said. Burj Khalifa has more than 200 floors, only 160 of which will be inhabited, while the remaining floors are for services.
