VALLETTA,(AFP) – Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Malta yesterday at the start of her fourth state visit to the former British colony, posing a major security headache for the Maltese armed forces before the opening of the 53-nation Commonwealth summit at the weekend.

Amid the pomp and ceremony of old empire, including a spit and polish honour guard from British trained soldiers in Valletta’s St George’s Square, the queen was formally welcomed to the island by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

The British monarch, accompanied by her husband Prince Philip, was cheered down the length of the city’s Republic Street by local people, some of them elderly expatriates waving Union Jacks.

The queen, head of the loose association of former British colonies, will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) tomorrow, after a two-day state visit.

Given the recent direct threat to the 80-year-old queen, named as “one of the severest enemies of Islam” in a recent Al-Qaeda video, the twin events pose an even bigger security problem for Malta’s limited resources than the groundbreaking Bush-Gorbachev Cold War summit held here in 1989.

Malta’s 1,500-strong army is on high alert with soldiers deployed around the perimeter of the island’s airport, perched on nearby rooftops and on link roads, while patrol boats from the country’s maritime squadron monitor a no-go zone encircling the southern Mediterranean archipelago.