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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release March 19, 1996

PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES AMBASSADOR TO SENEGAL

The President today announced his intent to nominate Dane Farnsworth Smith of New Mexico, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, as ambassador to the Republic of Senegal.

Smith is currently director of West African Affairs in the Department of State and since January 1995, concurrently serves as special presidential envoy for Liberia. He was U.S. ambassador to Guinea from 1990 to 1993. He served as director of the African Economic Policy Staff of the State Department from 1989 to 1990. He was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassies in Khartoum, Sudan, from 1986 to 1989 and in Gaborne, Botswana, from 1984 to 1986. Other assignments have included chief of the Food Policy Division in the State Department's Economic and Business Bureau, senior economist in the office of Japanese Affairs and postings in Liberia, Pakistan and Senegal. Smith began his international career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1963 to 1965.

Smith was born in Albuquerque, N.M., on Dec. 14, 1940. He is a graduate of Harvard College and was awarded a Ph.D in international relations from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1973. He speaks French and Arabic. He is married to Judith Armayor Smith and has two daughters and a son.