ANALYSIS-Saudi power below par despite wealth, Islamic role

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

RIYADH, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is the world's top oil exporter and cradle of Islam, but does not always punch its weight in the Middle East, where Islamist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah enjoy more popular appeal than any Arab government.

Any Saudi aspirations to exert decisive leadership in a fractured Arab world, or even to match the influence of non-Arab powers like Iran, Turkey and Israel, for now remain just that.

"The Saudi challenge is to develop a vision to fill the vacuum in the region, to have an active, principled foreign policy and to play a bigger role," said Awadh al-Badi, a scholar at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies.

"Now we are a status quo country that usually only reacts to things, although there have been some initiatives like King Abdullah's recent call for Arab reconciliation and unity."

Saudi Arabia's boldest move of the decade -- a sweeping Arab peace plan that it sponsored in 2002 and relaunched in 2007 -- was rebuffed by Israel and all but ignored by the United States.

That experience bruised and embittered the Saudis.

King Abdullah told an Arab summit held last month during Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip that the Arab peace offer remained on the table, but would not stay there for ever.

In sharper language, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and envoy to London and Washington, wrote in the Financial Times last month that Israel had come close to "killing the prospect of peace" with its Gaza onslaught, in which about 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.