UN envoy says Italy has to curb rising xenophobia

ROME, Oct 14 (Reuters) Italians need to curb their growing fear of foreigners, often spread by populist politicians who portray migrants seeking a better life as criminals or terrorists, the United Nations' racism envoy said yesterday.

Doudou Diene, the UN special rapporteur for racism, said after spending a week conducting a study of Italy's treatment of foreigners that the country needed to pay particular attention to integrating Muslims and face down growing Islamophobia.

''Italian society does not seem to be marked by a serious phenomenon of racism but it is facing a disturbing and profound trend of xenophobia,'' Diene told a news conference.

While Italy does not have the same brutal racism Diene has seen in other countries he has visited like Russia, where dark skinned people ''are being killed in the streets'', foreigners still face abuse from the police and institutions and are more likely to be poor and unemployed than indigenous Italians.

Diene said elements in the former government of Silvio Berlusconi, who narrowly lost an April election to the centre-left Romano Prodi, had ''instrumentalised'' fear of foreigners and made it a part of mainstream politics.

''The ideological rhetoric of anti-immigration and xenophobia, which has been dominant in the previous government, this rhetoric has been infiltrating slowly the ideology of political parties,'' the Senegalese-born envoy said.

Included in Berlusconi's ''House of Freedoms'' government was the Northern League, a party with an anti-illegal immigration message which often verged on racism as some of its ministers referred to Africans as ''bingo-bongos''.

Diene applauded Prodi's plans to repeal an immigration law passed by Berlusconi which saw thousands of migrants -- who cross the Mediterranean in fishing boats to enter Europe -- deported to Libya.

''It's an indication that something new may be happening in Italy now,'' he said.

REUTERS DKB BD0913