New U.S. Administrator Arrives in Baghdad to Stabilize Country

L. Paul Bremer told reporters upon arriving to the southern Iraqi city of Basra, ”It’s a wonderful challenge to help the Iraqi people basically reclaim their country from a despotic regime.”

Bremer then flew to Baghdad, where the U.S. reconstruction agency, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, is based. The agency is charged with restoring basic services, like power and water, stabilizing the widespread civic disorder and violence, and setting up an interim Iraqi authority.

Bremer traveled with Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who Bremer is replacing as the top civilian administrator in Iraq.

“We intend to have a very effective, efficient and well-organized handover,” Bremer told reporters after his plane landed at Baghdad International Airport.

“General Garner and I are pledged to working very close together,” Bremer said. “I don’t anticipate any problems with any of the changes that are ongoing.”

Bremer, 61, praised the work accomplished by Garner during his three-week tenure as the chief administrator of U.S. reconstruction efforts.

“I also want to say how proud I am of the work my good friend Jay Garner and the people who are working for him, how proud I am of everything they have done here in the last couple of weeks under extraordinary circumstances,” Bremer told reporters.

Responding to reports that Garner would be leaving Iraq sooner than planned, Bremer said, “I certainly intend to work with him in the next weeks here to get a bunch of serious milestones accomplished.”

Garner, who was standing next to Bremer at the press conference, said those reports were “not true.”

“What I say we have here is one team, one fight..We’ll drive on,” Garner said.

Asked by reporters if Bremer was guiding a U.S. plan to colonize Iraq, he responded, “The coalition did not come to colonize Iraq. We came to overthrow a despotic regime. That we have done. Now our job is to turn and help the Iraqi people regain control of their own destiny.”

“We will be in the process of discussing with appropriate people in Iraq a transition to an Iraqi government at a time line that still has to be determined,” Bremer said.

“We are not here as a colonial power. We are here to turn over to the Iraqi people…as quickly as possible,” he noted.

Bremer is expected to meet with many of Iraq’s leading political figures on Wednesday and will work with them to organize a national assembly meeting, the New York Times reported.

President Bush last week appointed Bremer, a counter-terrorism veteran from the State Department, as the new civilian administrator, as part of an overall reorganization at the U.S. reconstruction agency in Iraq.

Another official, Barbara Bodine, the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who had been the U.S. coordinator for central Iraq, was reassigned back to Washington by the State Department “for their own reasons,” Bremer said.