WASHINGTON, Nov 29: The United States, the world’s largest resettler of refugees, is likely to slash the number it accepts next year by tens of thousands due to new security procedures following the Sept 11 attacks, according to resettlement officials.

President George W. Bush last week signed a presidential determination to accept a maximum of 70,000 foreign refugees in fiscal year 2002, which began Oct. 2, down from 80,000 the year before and a 50 percent drop since 1992.

This in itself is the lowest number for more than a decade, but resettlement agency officials said the actual number admitted to the United States is certain to be far below that.

“I don’t think anyone believes we will reach anything like 70,000. We will be lucky to reach 50,000,” said Leonard Glickman, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the nation’s oldest refugee processing organization.

Even that may be optimistic. The Lawyers Committee on Human Rights said in a news letter this week that a more realistic figure was 35,000.

After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed almost 4,000 people, the United States suspended its refugee resettlement program, leaving 22,000 people who had already been accepted for resettlement in the United States stuck in limbo all around the world.

Almost 1,000 are Afghans, many of them widows and children whose husbands and fathers were killed by the Taliban, stuck in refugee camps in Pakistan.

The State Department, working with the Justice Department, completed a security review last week and says it wants to resume the program quickly. But many of the 22,000 will have to go through new security checks before being allowed to proceed to the United States.

After the 22,000 arrive in the United States, probably by the end of February, there is likely to be another pause of at least four months while new applicants go through the improved security procedures, according to Glickman.

NEW PROCEDURES UNKNOWN: “At best, it takes four months to process a refugee so we are definitely looking at another pause. And there are many questions. We don’t know what the new procedures are yet or how they will work,” he said.