Martin Newland, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, is set to launch on Thursday a new Abu Dhabi newspaper, which has the backing of the Arab emirate's $850 billion dollar sovereign wealth fund.

The National is wholly owned by the Abu Dhabi Media Company, which was recently established by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, ruler of the emirate and is backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

The paper is part of a broader campaign launched last summer by the Abu Dhabi government to transform itself into the media hub of the Middle East - a strategy that has seen the recent rollout of literary contests, film festivals and poetry shows.

However, some critics say The National’s ambitions could be compromised because it is based in the conservative United Arab Emirates, where the local press is notoriously timid.

Mr Newland said: “My first priority is to create a quality daily that is very good in journalistic terms. Will I have problems with censorship? To be honest, I don’t know and I suppose I’ll be finding out.”

In a statement before today’s launch, he suggested the paper would strive to promote the local culture rather than challenge it.

“The role of The National is to reflect society, help that society evolve and, perhaps most importantly, promote the bedrock traditions and virtues that must be preserved even in times of change. And that is why we have called our paper The National,” said Mr Newland, who helped launch Canada’s National Post and resigned from The Daily Telegraph after it was taken over by the Barclay Brothers.

He has assembled an editorial staff of about 200, many of them former employees of The Telegraph, including Colin Randall, ex Paris correspondent who has become The National's executive editor.

Other hires include deputy editor Hassan Fattah, of The New York Times, and Sue Ryan, Bob Cowan, Alan Philps and James Langton, all ex journalists from The Telegraph.

Mr Newland would not reveal his editorial budget. The broadsheet will be printed six days a week and feature eighty pages of national and international news.

Mr Newland is trying to do what nobody in the Middle East has done before: launch a quality, pan-Arab, English language newspaper, creating the print equivalent of the Al Jazeera television news channel. Other papers have failed in the past to make an impact in the Middle East. Two years ago, Frank Kane, formerly The Observer’s business editor, was hired by Andrew Neil, a former editor of The Sunday Times, to help set up The Financial Times in the region.

However, tensions between the editors and its government proprietors ended in the lifting of its licence before the launch.

Mr Kane said: “Martin is an incredibly professional editor and exceedingly competent, but he will undoubtedly face interference… His success will be judged on how well he keeps these people off his back.”

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