U.S. assigns officials to clear Iraqi refugee

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday appointed two senior officials to clear bureaucratic roadblocks blamed by Washington for the painfully slow pace of admitting Iraqi refugees to the United States.

Sectarian fighting and other violence that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq have forced more than 4 million people to leave their homes, an unprecedented number in the Middle East.

More than 2 million people are displaced within Iraq and up to 2.2 million more are believed to be in Syria and Jordan. A U.N. official said refugees now account for nearly 10 percent of the two countries' populations.

But up to now, the United States has resettled only 990 Iraqis on American soil, a U.S. official said. That is less than 10 percent of more than 10,000 refugees allocated for admission to the United States by the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees.

Critics including top diplomatic officials have complained that refugees could have to wait as long as two years because of bureaucratic bottlenecks. More rigorous security vetting protocols put in place after the September 11 attacks have also contributed to the delay.

On Wednesday, the Bush administration announced steps to address the problem.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named diplomat James Foley as senior coordinator for Iraqi refugee issues, while Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff appointed immigration law expert Lori Scialabba as senior adviser.

Foley, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti, will ensure that "any bureaucratic roadblocks that come up are being handled appropriately," said State Department Deputy spokesman Tom Casey. He described Foley as a "bureaucratic brick-breaker."

The Department of Homeland Security has interviewed more than 4,300 of the 10,000 refugees allocated to the United States by the United Nations.

Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, blamed several factors for the slow pace of admission including the task of setting up a system for handling refugees and a decision by Syria to deny entry visas to U.S. interviewers.

But she told a hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the pace of admissions would soon accelerate.

"These are Iraqis that have cooperated with the United States," Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said at the same forum. "They're at risk. They're being killed."

Some experts believe the true number of refugees could be far higher than official estimates suggest.

"In some countries you could almost double them," said Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Chertoff cautioned in a statement that the United States could not ignore potential security risks.

"We also must be mindful of the security risks associated with admitting refugees from war-torn countries," he said.