Unwelcome questions over Kazakhstan's human rights situation

When you are an ageing autocratic ruler in power for over two decades with a track record of suppressing the media and any opposition, you don't get asked too many awkward questions.

But President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan is Mr Cameron's new best friend and with the new respectability this visit has brought, came a few unwelcome questions.

At a press conference in the monumentally ostentatious presidential palace there was a lot of pomp and mutual back slapping. Mr Cameron declared that a visit to the oil rich country was long overdue: "The question should not be why the British Prime Minister is in Kazakhstan. The question is why it has taken a British Prime Minister so long to visit."

President Nazarbayev who also enjoys the lifelong title of "leader of the nation" declared that "after watching the activities" of the British Prime Minister "I would vote for him personally, definitely."

So far so cosy. But it was the travelling British press pack's one and only opportunity to ask a question of the lifelong leader and I asked:

The President fixed me with a cool stare:

He went on to compare his country favourably to Afghanistan and Pakistan and claimed that there was no political repression in Kazakhstan.

"Give me the last names" of those who say there are political prisoners he demanded. And then still staring at me directly, he finished icily - "Thank you very much for your advice, but no one has the right to instruct us how to live."

During this trip Mr Cameron has said that he has discussed the human rights situation with the President but has been unapologetic about the real focus of the trip: securing deals for British business.

And that undoubtedly is just the way President Nazarbayev prefers things.