Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s president, comes to the White House on Friday confident that his role as an oil-rich and stable ally in the “war on terror” has trumped the US administration’s professed sensibilities over his government’s shortcomings in corruption, human rights and democratic reforms.

Nonetheless, the developing military and energy relationship between the US and the central Asian giant has led to accusations that President George W. Bush is reverting to the “guns for oil” strategy which his own administration argues created the “false stability” in the Middle East that spawned al-Qaeda.