Britain said on Thursday it will boycott a United Nations meeting this month marking the 10th anniversary of an acrimonious conference on racism.

"The British Government has decided that the UK will not attend the UN meeting later this month to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the World Conference on Racism," Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement. "That conference, and the anti-Semitic atmosphere in which it was held, was a particularly unpleasant and divisive chapter in the UN's history. It is not an event that should be celebrated," he said. (Reuters)