US ambassador to France takes your questions

NANTES, Oct 12 (Expatica) — The recently appointed American ambassador to France, Craig Roberts Stapleton, will host an online chat next Tuesday and is soliciting questions in advance from French citizens and US residents in France.

The chat will take place on the Embassy website at 4pm; see the Embassy website for more information on how to participate or to submit your questions in advance. Embassy staff will pre-select several questions for submission to the ambassador.

Stapleton was posted to Paris at the end of June and formally introduced himself to French president Jacques Chirac one month later. The French ambassadorship is Stapleton’s second diplomatic posting, having served as ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 2000 to 2004.

Prior to that, Stapleton was president of Marsh and McLennan Real Estate Advisors in New York, managed — alongside now US president George W Bush — the Texas Rangers baseball team and supervised Bush’s presidential re-election campaign for Connecticut.

During the Bush-père’s administration, Stapleton was on the board of directors for the Peace Corps.

Originally from Missouri, Stapleton maintains a permanent residence in Connecticut and is married to the current president’s cousin Dorothy Walker Stapleton.

The American embassy has experimented previously with online chats, although this is the first time the ambassador himself will make such an appearance.

The last chat was hosted in May by General Counsel Donald Wells in May, who addressed the topic of visas in both French and English. The embassy received more than 500 questions. (Click to see a transcript.)

Subject: French news