GENEVA, Dec 8: Ninety-eight governments on Thursday approved a new red crystal emblem for the international Red Cross movement, after sweeping aside Syrian opposition to end a decades-long row and formally allow Israel into the relief agency network.
Twenty-seven nations voted against and 10 more abstained after a final marathon session of talks into the small hours of the day.
Most of the opposing votes were from Muslim countries.
Israeli ambassador Itzhak Levanon said the decision was a ‘historical Breakthrough’ which had corrected a decades-long ‘injustice’ against Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA - Red Star of David) organization.
“It is regrettable that certain countries chose to exclude themselves from the shared position of the family of nations by voting against” the new emblem, he added.
John Bellinger, a senior US State Department legal adviser who was in Geneva, said the step was ‘important’ and fulfilled ‘a major goal of US Policy’.
The new ‘red crystal’ emblem will join the Red Cross and Red Crescent and ease the way for the MDA to play a full part in the international emergency service and humanitarian network.
However, the new red outline of a square standing on edge is also expected to have a wider role for Red Cross and Crescent humanitarian workers in other areas where there is a need for an emblem that is free from religious or political connotations.
The MDA was officially not recognized in the Geneva Conventions, signed by 192 countries including Israel, because its own emblem did not conform with long-standing rules allowing only a cross or a crescent.
However, it has worked with the movement on the ground, and a first step was achieved last week when it signed an agreement with the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) that cemented years of practical cooperation.
The PRC’s ambulances were on Wednesday allowed into East Jerusalem, a contested and mainly Arab area of the city, a move which officials in Geneva applauded.
SYRIA OPPOSES MOVE: But Abdul Rahman Attar, head of the Syrian Red Crescent, cautioned that his country was still demanding an agreement on humanitarian aid in the Israeli-occupied Golan heights as a condition for approving the new emblem.
Syria says Israel is neglecting the health needs of the 25,000 Syrian citizens who live in the Golan, which Israel annexed in 1981 after taking over in 1967.—AFP
