BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 31 — Struggling with questions about its legitimacy, Iraq's Governing Council could be replaced through general elections held within a year, the United States administrator of Iraq said today.

The administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said he believed a new constitution could be written and accepted by the Iraqi people in a referendum, followed by general elections by the middle of next year.

"It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by midyear 2004," Mr. Bremer said while touring the partly refurbished Iraqi Foreign Ministry with members of the interim government he appointed on July 13.

"And when a sovereign government is installed, the coalition authority will cede authority to the government and my job here will be over."

In the past, Mr. Bremer has said a government could be in place by the end of 2004. His optimism was surprising given that it took the Governing Council more than two weeks to agree on a presidency, its first order of business.

When the 25 members were unable to select a single president, they tried to come up with a three-member presidency before finally deciding on a nine-member team that will each hold the presidency for a month, council sources told The Associated Press.

The legitimacy of Iraq's government is central to rebuilding the country. On Wednesday, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said it was unclear whether the council had the legitimacy to receive international loans.

"Clearly a constitution and an elected government would constitute a recognized government, but what do we do in the meantime?" Mr. Wolfensohn said in a one-day trip to Baghdad. "It's a subject that needs interpretation."

An elected government also would allay doubts among many United Nations members, who have been hesitant to send peacekeeping troops to an Iraq occupied and administered by the United States, which snubbed the international body by launching the war.

The United States said it had to go to war despite a lack of majority support on the United Nations Security Council because it said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So far, none have been found and Iraqi scientists insist they do not exist.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said members wanted a broader mandate in Iraq before agreeing to help pacify the still-violent country.

He said many member states felt that "the imprimatur of the United Nations — the legitimacy the United Nations offers — is important."

The United States would like international help in restoring peace to Iraq, where United States troops still come under attack daily.

Fifty-one American soldiers have been killed in action since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. So far, 166 American forces have been killed in the Iraq war, 19 more than in the 1991 Gulf War.

Mr. Bremer spoke in a tour of the Foreign Ministry building, which the United States has been helping to renovate after heavy looting and arson gutted the structure in the chaos that followed the entrance of United States forces into Baghdad.

He told gathered Iraqi diplomats that the establishment of a new government would mark the end of his diplomatic career.

"Although that will mark my final retirement as a diplomat, it will mean that you, the diplomats of Iraq, will be going forward representing a fully sovereign government," he said.

In a hopeful sign, oil ministry and industry sources told Dow Jones Newswires that Iraq's Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline, at a standstill since April, is due to start pumping again in early August.

The pipeline, which runs from Iraq's northern oilfields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, will pump 200,000 barrels a day, they said. The pipeline would increase Iraq's oil exports to at least 850,000 barrels a day, the sources said on the condition of anonymity.

Iraq is producing about 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day, compared with about 2.5 million barrels a day before the war.