THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                         (New York, New York)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                   January 15, 1999

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger announced today the appointment of Antony J. Blinken as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council. In that role, he will be principal adviser to the President and the National Security Adviser on U.S. relations with the countries of Western Europe, Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Mr. Blinken has been Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council since August 1996, overseeing foreign policy planning, communications and speech writing. Before that, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs.

Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Mr. Blinken was a lawyer in New York and Paris. He has been a reporter for the New Republic magazine and has written about foreign policy for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine and other publications. He is the author of Ally Versus Ally: America, Europe and the Siberian Pipeline Crisis (Praeger, 1987.)

Mr. Blinken attended high school in Paris, where he received a French Baccalaureate degree, and is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School.

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