ROYAL TREATMENT FOR GRADS QUEEN NOOR SPEAKS AT OCCIDENTAL.

Byline: Emanuel Parker Staff Writer

EAGLE ROCK - Queen Noor of Jordan expressed hope that the Occidental College graduates she addressed Sunday will help establish a ``new kind of security, one built on mutual benefits and not a better bomb.''

The 52-year-old queen received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree prior to her address to 464 seniors. Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, whose father, Clyde Jack Browne, graduated from Occidental in 1955, received an honorary doctor of music degree.

Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at Remsen Bird Hillside Theater, Noor gave a ringing endorsement to the United Nations, calling it ``the most powerful engine for security and cooperation ever created by mankind.''

Born Lisa Najeeb Halaby to a prominent Arab-American family, she was educated in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York and Massachusetts before enrolling in Princeton University's first coed freshman class. She has a bachelor's degree in architecture and urban planning.

In 1978, she wed King Hussein of Jordan, and they had four children. He gave her the name ``Noor,'' which means light in Arabic.

Noor chairs the King Hussein Foundation, started in 1999, the year he died. She is a U.N. adviser, chairman of the U.N.'s advisory committee for the University International Leadership Academy and is president of the United World Colleges.

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(1 -- 2) Jordan's Queen Noor, left, delivers the commencement address Sunday to Occidental College graduates, a ceremony at which she received an honorary degree. The Remsen Bird Hillside Theater, below, was packed to hear the queen's speech, in which she promoted the efforts of the United Nations.

Bernardo Alps/Staff Photographer