A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit. So it seems he is not going to have a chat with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright

"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.

His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities -- Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Race has become a central issue in the U.S. election cycle because Sen. Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the battle for the Democratic nomination battle, stands to become the country's first African American president.

His campaign has increased turnout among black voters but has also turned off some white voters in a country with a history of slavery and racial segregation.

Diene, a Senegalese lawyer who has served in the independent post since 2002, will report his findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council next year. The UN raporteur has not been without controversy and the European Union Human Rights Commission recently stop short of accusing him of promoting an “Afro-centrist” view of Human Rights.

In a report last year he said Islamophobia had grown worldwide since the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, carried out by al-Qaeda militants. His assertion was received with skepticism from European members who perceive that Doudou “fails to recognize for genuine concerns regarding the rise of Islamic extremism.”

A U.N. panel which examined the U.S. record on racial discrimination last March urged the United States to halt racial profiling of Americans of Arab, Muslim and South Asian descent and to ensure immigrants and non-nationals are not mistreated.

It also said America should impose a moratorium on the death penalty and stop sentencing young offenders to life in prison until it can root out racial bias from its justice system.

Some 800 racially motivated incidents against people perceived to be Arab, Muslim, Sikh or South Asian had been investigated since the September 11 attacks,. Substantial progress had been made over the years in addressing disparities in housing, education, employment and health care, according to a U.S. report submitted to the talks.

BACKGROUND ON DOUDOU DIENE (Brazil accused him of racism) (Russia accused him of bias)(the U.K. is of the opinion that Doudou is full o’manure)

Doudou Diène (b. 1941) of Senegal is the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.Diène holds a law degree from the University of Caen (France), a doctorate in public law from the University of Paris, and a diploma in political science from the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris.

Between 1972 and 1977 he served as Senegal's deputy representative to UNESCO. In 1977, he joined the UNESCO secretariat, where he held several positions including Director of the Division of Inter-cultural Projects. He was appointed Special Rapporteur for racism-related topics by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in August 2002, replacing Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo of Benin.

The final document submitted by the rapporteur during his visit to Brazil between on October 17-26, 2005, was accused be discriminatory because the rapporter didn't make any reference about to the Caboclo population of the country, Multiracials of Native and European origin. Caboclos are the most numerous ethnic-racial identity of the Amazon and prevailing in other regions of the country. While stating that "slavery was abolished in 1888. Racial miscegenation that followed between whites, blacks and Indians determined the ethnic and cultural map of Brazil", the report omits the populations of Multiracial identity (such as mulatto, caboclos and cafuzos), classifying all as african-descendants - miscegenation between Natives and Europeans begins in Brazil since its colonization, in the sixteenth century, before the arrive of Africans in the country. The report also referred the proposta of the Statute of Racial Equality, considered discriminatory and mestizophobic by the Multiracial movement, as a project supported "by most political actors." Doudou Dienè had a match with the then Minister Matilde Ribeiro, of the Special Secretariat of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR), who resigned after reports of irregular use of corporate card. Leaders of the Multiracial movement of Brazil were perplexed with what was said with the Doudou Dienè's report, saying that this does not reflect the reality of ethnic-racial country, promotes interests of groups that want to impose on the Brazilian Multiracials the Black identity, goes against the Declaration of Durban and collaborates with the conflict between Multiracials and Blacks in Brazil.

Ambassador Valery Loshchinin, the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the U.N. Office at Geneva, characterized Doudou report’s on Russia as follows: “A range of problems in the sphere of racism and xenophobia was extrapolated [in the report] that which for our country either don’t exist at all or aren’t really that serious or systematic. There is no need to comment because the report is inappropriate, both in content and conceptually. We do not deny that, unfortunately, there have been incidents of racist or ethnic intolerance. However, to make far-reaching conclusions based on this fact about allegedly dominant tendencies within society and then, based on unproven data and falsifications, to assert that there are certain sins within the Russian political system, the justice system and the education system, is absurd.”

FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION RESPONSE TO DOUDOU’S REPORT

“First, he fails to distinguish between, on the one hand, Islamophobia, which he defines as baseless hostility and fear vis--vis Islam, and on the other hand, genuine concerns regarding the rise of Islamic extremism. Secondly, he fails to recognise that there are important differences between the Islamic and other worldviews that contribute significantly to the problem.