King Abdullah inaugurated the multi-billion dollar King Abdullah Uinversity for Science of and Technology (KAUST), saying it was a dream he had had for 25 years.

The ceremony was attended by numerous foreign leaders, including Britain's Prince Andrew, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

King Abdullah, whose deeply conservative country is the site of Islam's two holiest sites, said "faith and science are not incompatible" and that universities should be "in the front line in the war against extremists."

He expressed hope that the unversity would be a "house of knowledge and a place of tolerance."

Earlier, university chairman and oil minister Ali al-Naimi said "this represents a pivotal point for the future of Saudi Arabia. It is incumbent on us to work on diversifying our economy for the future."

Jammed with 1.5 billion dollars of state-of-the-art equipment and sporting one of the world's fastest supercomputers, KAUST is a keystone of the 85-year-old monarch's effort to modernise the oil-dependent kingdom, underscored by its launch on the Saudi national day.

Riyadh has poured billions of its plentiful oil dollars into the project, including huge sums to recruit an international staff of top-flight professors and a student body for the all-English, all-post graduate institution.

While Saudi officials are loathe to talk about it, KAUST is also the first public education institution in the kingdom to mix men and women, challenging hardline Islamic clerics' rule on keeping the sexes separated.

Built in just two years out of the barren desert coast 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Jeddah, experts say KAUST is probably the first research university in the world built from the ground up.

But no one is certain whether the huge leap into global-class research, with the best equipment, talent and research projects money can buy, can revolutionise the country's backward and often heavily religion-focused education sector.

"Our research facilities are unsurpassed," says KAUST president Choon Fong Shih, who helped build the national university in Singapore into a respected research institution.

"I stood here two years ago, there was nothing but sand and sea. Today, there is one of the best infrastructures for research," he told AFP.

The 374 masters and doctorate degree students in the inaugural class represent more than 60 countries, with some 15 percent from Saudi Arabia itself.

With about 15 percent of the incoming student body women, all having studied at universities outside the kingdom, mixing is absolutely necessary for successful research, experts say.

"We are not putting a quota for men and women. What KAUST is after is the best minds of the world," said Naimi, who had the primary responsibility of getting Kaust built and started up.

Scientists said a key factor in making KAUST successful would be whether the operating environment would be more open, dynamic and efficient than other institutions.

Some such challenges were evident on inauguration day.

Professors said much basic research equipment was not in place despite already being several weeks into the first term; the university computer system was still subject to the official Saudi internet censor, which blocks unfavorable media and political websites; and students said they were ordered not to talk to the media.

Security was high for the opening ceremony after Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch issued a new threat against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, nearly four weeks after a suicide bomber blew himself up in an attempt to kill Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

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