U.S. administrator says goal is to give Iraqis own destiny

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The man chosen to lead U.S. efforts to put postwar Iraq on track to democracy, L. Paul Bremer, said upon his arrival in the capital Monday that his goal is to help Iraqis "regain control of their own destiny" after decades of rule by Saddam Hussein.

Bremer, a former State Department official, arrived with the official he is replacing, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner. In a joint interview, both men denied there was any premature breakup of the Iraq reconstruction group, while acknowledging that one senior member was leaving early.

Bremer said career diplomat Barbara Bodine, who was coordinator for central Iraq, including Baghdad, within the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, was being reassigned back to Washington by the State Department "for their own reasons." He did not elaborate.

Garner denied reports that he, too, was departing earlier than planned.

"What I say we have here is one team, one fight," he said, using a common military expression to show a unified approach to a common goal. He spoke on the tarmac at the Basra airport moments after he, Bremer and a Pentagon group led by Gen. Richard Myers landed. "We'll drive on," Garner added. He did not answer directly when asked how long he would remain on the job.

Margaret Tutwiler, who had been head of communications under Garner and accompanied Bremer and him on their stops in Basra and Baghdad, said the plan from the start was for her to be in Iraq for one month, until May 15, and then return to her post as ambassador to Morocco. She did not say if she would stick precisely to that date.

Bremer, attired in a dark blue, pinstripe suit and tan desert boots, alighted from the rear of an MC-130 special operations aircraft and told a small group of reporters that he was confident of success in the American-led effort to put postwar Iraq on track to self-government and prosperity.

"The coalition did not come to colonize Iraq," he said. "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."

He disputed the notion that there was trouble at high levels of the American reconstruction team.

"We intend to have a very effective, efficient and well-organized handover" of power from Garner to him, Bremer said. "General Garner and I are pledged to working very closely together."

At his first stop, in Basra, Bremer said in an interview with The Associated Press that he intend to work with Garner "in the next weeks here to get a bunch of serious milestones accomplished." Several times in his public remarks Monday he praised Garner's accomplishments.

Myers, asked at a separate news conference about reports of an early Garner exit, said, "I know of no plan for Mr. Garner to leave."

No success alone

In what he called his motto for the Iraq mission, Bremer brought with him on the plane from Washington a wooden desktop sign with raised wooden letters that read, "Success Has a Thousand Fathers." He said he wanted to remind others that none of them alone could achieve the mission.

Bremer, 61, is a onetime assistant to former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger and was ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism from 1986 to 1989.

When Bremer and Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reached Baghdad they split up. Bremer said he would be holding staff meetings at his headquarters. Myers visited U.S. troops at several locations, including one of Saddam's palaces that now serves as a U.S. military headquarters.

Myers also visited an Iraqi hospital, Al Yarmuk, that is attached to a medical college. The hospital sustained limited damage during the war but was stripped clean by looters afterward, according to the hospital's director.