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As anticipation for Sacha Baron Cohen's cinematic ode to recreational dog shooting and sister-pimping builds steadily, the Kazakh government is showing no signs of backing down in their PR-reparative counter campaign. Realizing that abducting Borat's website in the middle of the night and subjecting it to a series of pillow-case-hooded humiliations was perhaps not the most mature way of handling things, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev is now using more diplomatic means to promote his country as a kinder, more humorless place than Cohen's buffoonery portrays:

President Nazarbayev will visit the White House and the Bush family compound in Maine when he flies in for talks that will include the fictional character Borat. [...]

"I cannot speak for the president himself, only for the government, but I certainly don't think President Nazarbayev and Mr Bush will share a joke about the film.

"The bottom line is we want people to know that he does not represent the true people of Kazakhstan."

We wish Nazarbayev the best with his mission of enlightenment, though might we suggest that before he gets to the chapter about how it's not common practice among his people to point at a urinal and ask, "You do dirt in there?" he might first want to clear up any misconceptions the President may have regarding his direct involvement in the 9-11 attacks, due to the "-stan" suffix in his country's name.