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Biography Priscilla A. Clapp Charge d'Affaires to Burma

A Minister-Counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service, Priscilla Clapp became U.S. Charge d'Affaires and Chief of Mission in Rangoon, Burma in July 1999. She served earlier as the U.S. Deputy Special Representative for Humanitarian Demining, implementing the President's initiative to accelerate and complete humanitarian demining by 2010, and as Special Representative for Food Security, charged with developing a U.S. international program following the World Food Summit of 1996. She spent three years from 1993-96 as Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in South Africa. Her other previous assignments included four years as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Refugee Programs, three years working on the Soviet Union--two in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and one on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff--and four years in the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo with responsibility for U.S.-Japanese defense relations. She speaks Russian, Japanese, French, and Burmese. With a degree in Russian studies from Middlebury College, Ms. Clapp was employed initially as a research librarian at the Radio Liberty Committee and spent five years with a Boston research firm pursuing arms control projects, including several with the MIT Center for International Studies. In 1970, she joined the staff of the Brookings Institution as a Research Associate, focusing on national security policy and U.S.-Japanese relations. In 1975, she moved to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and in 1977, to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs. Ms. Clapp is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her books include: with Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings, 1974), with J.M. Destler, et al., Managing an Alliance: The Politics of U.S.-Japanese Relations (Brookings, 1976), with Morton Halperin, U.S.-Japanese Relations in the 1970's (Harvard, 1974). She is the author of numerous articles. Released by the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs February 2000. [end of document] || East Asian and Pacific Affairs | EAP Chiefs of Mission | EAP Country Information | U.S. Department of State | Disclaimers ||