The US, Australia and the Netherlands announced at the weekend they would boycott a United Nations anti-racism conference, opening in Geneva today, that they fear might single out Israel for attack and try to stifle criticism of Islam.

The US state department said that “with regret” it would not be joining the meeting to review international progress on combating racism and xenophobia in the eight years since a summit in Durban, South Africa.

Canada, Israel and Italy had already said they would not attend. They wanted to avoid a rerun of the 2001 Durban meeting at which Israel was attacked over its alleged racist policies to-wards Palestinians. With other western states either still undecided, or sending only low-level delegations, the first of the event's five days – which coincides with today's Holocaust Remembrance Day – will be dominated by an address by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, president of Iran.