Kazakhs Counter Comic With Ad Campaign

President Bush meets with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Friday, Sept. 29, 2006. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Gerald Herbert - AP)

The new ads also acknowledge some of the country's negative aspects: It suffers from high rates of cancer, apparently due to the aftereffects of decades of Soviet nuclear testing.

The government sees Nazarbayev's U.S. trip as its chance to cement Kazakhstan's place as the West's favorite partner in formerly Soviet Central Asia.

For his part, Borat claims the true aim of Nazarbayev's trip is to promote his film, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" _ and that he will be co-hosting a preview.

"This screening will be followed by cocktail party and a discussion of closer ties between our countries at Hooters," Borat said on his Web site.

Of course, the Kazakh government is horrified at the whole thing.

In December, it banned Cohen from using a Web site for Borat with the ".kz" domain name. Kazakhstan's embassies in the West have protested Cohen's character, and tried through the media to mend the damage to their image _ in some cases disputing, one-by-one, each barbaric habit Borat attributes to Kazakhs.

The movie, which debuted this month at the Toronto film festival, opens in U.S. cinemas in November. The Kazakh government says it isn't planning to ban it, but the manager of the nation's biggest cinema chain said it wouldn't screen the film.

"Didn't you see what nonsense it says about Kazakhstan? All our traditions and customs are distorted. It says that we still live in yurts and so on," said Ruslan Sultanov, referring to traditional tents made of skins or felt. "There's no point showing it. Spectators will not watch something like that."

But Paryz Baitenov, whose independent 31 TV Channel is planning to produce a report on Borat, looks at the character's antics differently. "I don't know any more brilliant promoter of Kazakhstan than Borat," he said.

"Of course it's not politically correct. But it's funny."