Amman  - An estimated accumulated Arab surplus of 1 trillion petrodollars gained prominence over the past three months as one of the key factors to reckon with in handling the global financial upheaval that erupted in the United States in September and spread to the rest of the world economy later on.

Analysts in the Middle East also raised the possibility of the turmoil prompting governments of the oil-rich Arab countries to repatriate a major part of Arab funds mostly invested or deposited in Western countries, as the Arab world appeared to emerge a safer haven for such investments.

However, regional experts seemed to cast doubt on both tendencies, given rapidly plummeting oil prices, the contraction of Arab funds invested in the West due to the global financial meltdown and political reasons that could impede the repatriation process.

"If the crude prices continue to decline at the present rate and the world recession drags on, I don't think Arab countries with surplus funds will be able to give a hand to the world economy," former governor of the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) Mohammad Nabulsi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an interview.

"Furthermore, rich Arab states will be hesitant to invest in banks or economic institutions that struggle for survival in the middle of a downturn stage," he said.

Under the pressure of a shrinking demand due to stagnation that grips the world's major economies, oil prices plunged to a four-year low of about 40 dollars a barrel early in December from a peak of 147 dollars in July 2008 - a decline of about 73 per cent.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Middle East and central Asian oil producers accumulated a current account surplus of 1.1 trillion dollars between 2003 and 2007, compared with 150 billion dollars in the previous five years.

The Economist magazine put at about 400 billion dollars the losses of the Arab sovereign funds due to the global financial turbulence Nabulsi believed that oil-rich Gulf states would be obliged to use part of their accumulated wealth to prop up their sinking stock markets and fulfill their development plans.

"Obviously, GCC states will be inclined to move their funds inward to help their declining stock markets," he said.

The bourses of the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman - lost about 538 billion dollars between September and the beginning of December, according to a report by the Kuwait- based Global International Investments.

"For a long time to come, I believe Gulf funds will be very cautious towards both objectives of taking part in the global bail- out or returning home," Nabulsi said.

Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf dropped strong hints that his country's reserves would not be part of the world's rescue blueprints.

He said that the slump in the price of oil had proven the effectiveness of the Kingdom's policy of maintaining sufficient reserves to make its development projects immune to revenue fluctuations.

"It was said that our reserves were too high, but the current experience shows that the size of these reserves is adequate to enable us to continue our development programmes even with lower oil prices," he added.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude exporter, told leaders of the G-20 meeting in Washington in November that he expected "investments by the public and the state-controlled oil sector (in his country) to exceed 400 billion dollars over the next five years."

However, a tour of three GCC countries in October by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have shed light on the type of pressures well-to-do Arab countries could be exposed to in future to join a universal effort to bring the world economy out of its unprecedented crisis.

Brown campaigned to convince Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to join an IMF emergency bail-out fund of 250 billion dollars that could be extended by hundreds of billions of dollars at later stages.

"I very much hope you and other Gulf states will be willing to contribute, with other countries, to join efforts to stop the financial crisis spreading by helping to boost the IMF fund for distressed economies," Brown told a gathering of UAE businessmen in Abu Dhabi at the end of his Gulf tour.

Brown's Gulf trip appeared to have scored partial success when UAE and Qatari sovereign funds reportedly contributed 5.4 billion dollars to the bail-out of Barclays, one of Britain's most famous banks.

The Barclays deal, which sought to avoid the possible loss of independence and virtual nationalization by rejecting the help by the British government, heralded a departure from what appeared to be an objection by Western governments to allowing Arab institutions to acquire controlling interests in Western businesses.

"Quite apart from the deal being the first in the predicted shopping bonanza in Europe and the United States by cash-rich energy producers, the points is that a bank of the caliber of Barclays clearly trusts Arab money and trusts those who have it not to interfere in the running of the bank," the Saudi daily newspaper Arab News wrote in an editorial:

"It is so very different to the situation a couple of years ago when a public outcry in the United States, largely whipped up by the Congress, forced Dubai Port World to sell the six American ports it had bought from British-based P&O because of supposed security concerns about Arab ownership of ports in the United States." (dpa)