WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States briefly suspended its refugee programme for Iraqi asylum seekers this week but reversed itself on Friday after refugee groups raised a storm of protest.

An Immigration and Naturalisation Service official said the programme had been stopped for a few days but was being resumed. He declined to say either why the programme had been halted or why it had been restarted.

Refugee agencies said earlier that the entry into the country of several hundred Iraqi refugees who had already received security clearances had been blocked.

The refugees are mostly scattered between Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

"Iraqi refugees scheduled for resettlement in the United States have proven that they were persecuted in Iraq not only to the United Nations, but to the U.S. government itself," said Lavinia Limon, director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees.

"They have undergone new, very rigorous security reviews by the FBI and CIA that were put in place after Sept, 11, 2001."

The Bush administration has set a target to accept 70,000 refugees in fiscal year 2003. Last year, it had the same target but accepted only 27,058.

Refugee programmes ground to a halt after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon of September 11, 2001. They have since resumed with new security procedures in place but at a much reduced rate.

According to an annual review by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, there were just under 15 million refugees worldwide in 2001.