Nomination of John R. Countryman To Be United States Ambassador to Oman

The President today announced his intention to nominate John R. Countryman, of Washington, D.C., to be Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, vice Marshall W. Wiley, resigned.

Mr. Countryman was a reporter and feature writer for the News-Times of Danbury, Conn., in 1961-62 prior to entering the Foreign Service. In 1963-65 he was a Foreign Service officer-general in Istanbul and served as staff assistant in the Department in 1965-66. He studied Arabic language in Beirut in 1966-68 and was economic and commercial officer in Dhahran (1968-71), in Tripoli (1971-73), and Deputy Chief of Mission in Libreville (1973-75). In 1975-76 he attended the Army War College. In the Department he was Deputy Director of the Office of Regional Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (1976-78), and since 1979 he has been Director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs.

Mr. Countryman graduated from Fordham University (B.S., 1954) and the University of Miami (M.A., 1961). He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Berlin (Germany) in 1954-55. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a pilot in 1956-58. Mr. Countryman is married and has one child. He was born January 25, 1933, in Brooklyn, N.Y.