President Nursultan Nazarbayev has been criticised for failing to improve Kazakhstan’s rights record World leaders and top diplomats are in Kazakhstan for a rare summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The talks in Astana are expected to focus on Afghanistan, international drug trafficking and terrorism.
Human rights campaigners have said Kazakhstan’s poor record on democracy and rights make it an unsuitable venue.
Critics say the event is just a talking shop, and a clever way for the oil-rich country to boost its image overseas.
This is the by far the biggest international event ever to be held on Kazakh soil.
Heads of state and high-level diplomats from the 56 European and former Soviet states that make up the OSCE are gathering in the capital Astana.
It is the first such summit in a decade – and it comes amid the continuing Wikileaks controversy.
Regional security, frozen conflicts and the war in Afghanistan are on the agenda.
But throughout its chairmanship of the OSCE this year, Kazakhstan has been criticised for its poor human rights record.
The government had promised to make amends when it was awarded the chairmanship in 2007.
But, human rights groups say, now that the country’s leadership has achieved its main foreign policy goal of hosting the summit, it is happy to weather international criticism.
And, given that many of the leaders present will be facing each other for the first time since the latest Wikileaks US diplomatic cables were published, any residual concerns about Kazakhstan’s human rights record are likely to be almost entirely drowned out.
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