TEHRAN, Jan. 22 (MNA) -– Government spokesman said on Tuesday that Iran will use all its diplomatic efforts to lift the Gaza blockade.

The Associated Press reported that the international Red Cross issued a dire warning on the state of basic services in Gaza on Tuesday, calling on Israel to lift a blockade it has imposed on the strip’s residents.
“With a great regret and strong condemnation of these crimes… the Islamic Republic of Iran will use all its diplomatic efforts to lift the Gaza blockade and the threats against the Palestinians,” Gholam-Hossein Elham told a regular news briefing.
“These bitter crimes and terrorist acts which are done with the U.S. green light are unjustified and run contrary to international regulations and ethical principles and rules of war,” the trained lawyer noted.
“Bush’s recent visit to the Middle Eastern region left a memory of crimes, terror, blockade, and pressure on innocent Palestinian people, especially children,” he explained.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Monday telephoned Saudi, Syrian, Algerian, Qatari, and Malaysian leaders to insist that it is necessity the Organization of the Islamic Conference hold an emergency meeting on the ongoing crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Elham said fortunately all the Islamic leaders whom Ahmadinejad talked to agreed on the need to remove all restrictions against the Gaza residents, send humanitarian aid to the victims, and make political efforts to end the Zionist crimes by holding an emergency OIC meeting.
He expressed hope that the Zionist-inspired “conflagration” in the occupied territories would come to swift end.
In an official letter to OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday called on the Jeddah-based OIC to hold an emergency meeting at the foreign ministerial level on the situation in Gaza.
“Humanitarian aid alone cannot help contain the crisis,” said Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. “What is needed are political steps ... to ensure that enough imports are allowed into Gaza to make life bearable.