Queen Elizabeth has declined to attend a ceremony marking Britain's first Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow because she does not wish to interrupt her winter break at Sandringham.
The Prime Minister, Mr Blair, will lead politicians, church leaders and charity workers at a ceremony in Westminster Hall, London, which will be broadcast on television and radio. Survivors and relatives of the Holocaust and those killed in the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda will attend.
Officials from the Home Office invited Queen Elizabeth to the ceremony, but Buckingham Palace turned down the invitation. It is understood that Queen Elizabeth will attend a shooting party at Sandringham tomorrow organised by her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Declining the Home Office invitation, Buckingham Palace said: "The Queen always remains at Sandringham until February 6th, the anniversary of her accession to the throne. She does one or two local engagements, but does not normally return to London." The Prince of Wales said he would attend the ceremony.
The British government announced a special day to remember the victims of modern genocide and conflict two years ago but since then the event has been mired in controversy.
The Home Office refused to allow Armenians to mark the 1915 killing of 1.5 million of its people by Turkey because officials feared a diplomatic row with Ankara. The Turkish government has refused to acknowledge the deaths and is particularly sensitive to any references to the killings. Last week, when the French government passed a bill recognising the incident as genocide, Ankara reacted furiously by recalling its ambassador from Paris.
British officials also argued that the Armenians would be excluded because the memorial day was intended to commemorate victims of the second World War and afterwards, including those who died in Rwanda and Cambodia.
But that decision was reversed when the Armenian community lobbied the Home Office. As a result, a group of about 20 Armenians, including two survivors of the massacre, will attend.
Critics of the event have pointed out that while tomorrow is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army, it is already marked as the EU's Genocide Remembrance Day.
A leading British Reform rabbi, Dr Jonathan Romain, said the event could overshadow Remembrance Sunday. "Remembrance Sunday reflects the fallen in the war. My fear is that in two years' time memorial day will become a subdued affair . . . like a Diana memorial," he told the London Times.
In the Observer, critic Nick Cohen described the memorial day as "entirely misconceived and hypocritical", claiming Britain is not morally or intellectually fit to commemorate such events.