AMD 64 Chroot install fails at chroot

I have quite a bit of experience on installing Debian over the net using debootstrap and chroot, even on remote machines. I have leased a new server with OpenSuSE 10.1 (32 bit) installed, and frankly prefer Debian as I am more familiar with it.

Here is the uname -a :

Linux suse101lamp 2.6.16.13-4-smp #1 SMP Wed May 3 04:53:23 UTC 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

I would like to install Debian sarge on this machine, and everything goes well up until the chroot - where I get the error:

chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error

I suspect that the binary executable was compiled for 64 bit, and the kernel is 32 bit.

Anyone have any ideas on what to do? I confess that this is my first 64 bit machine. If necessary I will just install everything in 32 bit emulation - but what a shame to waste such a nice cpu...

I located this on the net:
https://alioth.debian.org/docman/view.php/30192/21/debian-amd64-howto.html

But no luck.

Would bash execute if I installed the AMD64 kernel on the chroot partition, hoping for the best on reboot? Or copying the 32-bit binary bash to the chroot?

Running out of ideas, so would really appreciate some help. I do not have physical access to the machine, only network and sshd (not a problem normally for me, but without a chroot, this gets difficult).

Thanks.