Tallest building completion delayed by 4 months

The world's tallest skyscraper under construction in this Gulf city-state will take longer than planned to finish, its builders said yesterday, putting off the opening planned for the end of this year.

The Burj Dubai tower currently stands over 500 m tall. The state-owned developer Emaar Properties said completion would be postponed until sometime in 2009. It did not give specifics, but the newspaper Gulf News and the online news site ArabianBusiness.com said the delay would be four months.

"The company would rather opt for a nominal delay in total quality execution of the Burj Dubai... than compromise on any aspect of quality," Emaar, one of the main builders in this Gulf boomtown, said in a press release without elaborating.