The Archbishop of Canterbury has apologised for suggesting that failure to act at Cop26 could be graver than leaders who ignored warnings about the Nazis in the 1930s.

Justin Welby addressed his earlier comments made during a BBC interview in a tweet where he apologised for the offence his words may have caused to Jewish people.

The Church of England’s most senior leader said: “I unequivocally apologise for the words I used when trying to emphasise the gravity of the situation facing us at Cop26.

“It’s never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis and I’m sorry for the offence caused to Jews by these words.”

Mr Welby had told the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg at the Glasgow summit on Monday that world leaders “will be cursed if they don’t get this right”.

He added that “people will speak of them in far stronger terms than we speak today of the politicians of the 30s, of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany because this will kill people all around the world for generations, and we have will have no means of averting it”.

Mr Welby went on to say: “It will allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale.

“I’m not sure there’s grades of genocide, but there’s width of genocide, and this will be genocide indirectly, by negligence, recklessness, that will in the end come back to us or to our children and grandchildren.”

The archbishop previously said he was attending Cop26 to listen to countries which are most affected by climate change, and to encourage those who are making progress.