Officials gave no explanation for the move against Bashar Jaafari but US relations have deteriorated sharply with Damascus since Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
led a crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising in 2011.
"We have delivered a diplomatic note to the permanent representative of the Syrian mission to the United Nations
...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
in New York informing him that he is restricted to a 25-mile (40 kilometer) travel radius," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
The note was delivered at the end of February, she told news hounds.
Some other countries' U.N. envoys face similar restrictions, she said. Envoys from Iran and
North Korea are among them."So this is not something that is out of the realm of what we've done before," Psaki said.
The Coalition for a Democratic Syria, an association of Syrian-American groups, welcomed the announcement, accusing the diplomat of trying to fuel sectarian divisions among Syrians in his public appearances in the United States.
"This development has been a long-standing objective that the Syrian-American community has been trying to achieve for the past five months," said Chad Brand, a front man for the coalition.
For the past six months, Jaafari "has been conducting a series of propaganda tours across the United States to mislead Americans and sow sectarian discord among Syrian-Americans," he said.