White House officials are downplaying calls to focus on Islamist terrorism in a three-day summit aimed at preventing violent extremism, insisting that recent attacks should not lead to stereotyping of certain communities as higher risk.

The international conference, which begins on Tuesday in Washington and will seek ways of deterring home-grown terrorism, has been criticised by Republicans for failing to single out Islamist extremism for particular scrutiny despite having been convened by Barack Obama in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and coming amid concern over radicalisation by the Islamic State, or Isis, and just days after a terrorist attack in Denmark.

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But the administration is adamant that delegates should also discuss lessons from other conflicts, such as the fight against Farc in Colombia and attacks by Christians on Sikh or Jewish targets, and rejects criticism it is being overly politically correct in taking such a broad approach.

“You can call them what you want; we are calling them terrorists,” said a senior administration official in a briefing for reporters ahead of the summit. “We are not treating these people are part of a religion.”

Vice-president Joe Biden will open the summit at the White House by meeting mayors from three US cities – Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis-Saint Paul – which have been running pilot studies on how to work with local communities to deter extremism.

Despite picking cities such as Boston, which saw a bombing of its marathon in April 2013, or Minneapolis, which has a large Somali population, the White House insists it will also consider lessons from extremists groups from all religions.

“We are all agreed the individuals that perpetrated the attacks in Paris and elsewhere are calling themselves Muslim and claiming that a certain interpretation of Islam motivated them,” said another US official, speaking anonymously on Monday.

“They are not making any secret of that and neither are we, but we are very, very clear: we do not believe that they represent Islam. There is definitely no justification for [terror] in any religion, and that’s the view of the vast majority of Muslims.”

Obama will speak to the conference twice, first from the White House on Wednesday and again at a State Department event attended by foreign and interior ministers from 60 countries on Thursday.

Those guests will include British home secretary Theresa May and United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon. They are expected to produce a seven-month action plan before a second meeting ahead of the UN general assembly.

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Obama first mooted the international approach to preventing violent extremism in a speech to the UN last year. But since then, the war against Isis in Syria and Iraq, combined with homegrown terrorist attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, Paris and Copenhagen, has increased pressure on Obama to articulate a clearer strategy for combating what many see as growing Muslim radicalisation around the world.

The president was criticised for appearing to describe aspects of the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris last month as random, rather than ascribing religious motivation. Obama also courted controversy at a Washington prayer breakfast by focusing on similarities with other religious extremists throughout history.

Yet when the president was first criticised for focusing the conference on violent extremism of all sorts, his press secretary listed attacks on Jewish groups in Kansas and Washington and Sikhs in Wisconsin as reasons to seek a common approach to combating terrorism.



“What we hope to do [at the conference] is to work with state and local officials to talk about best practices,” said press secretary Josh Earnest, “about some of the things that they can do in their community to make sure that individuals like this don’t succeed in carrying out these acts of violence in the name of a warped ideology.”