Nazarbayev and Cameron discuss incident with armless Kazakhstan artist

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and British Prime-Minister David Cameron have discussed the incident that happened with the visa of disabled artist from Kazakhstan Karipbek Kuyukov, Tengrinews.kz reports. “As for the disabled artist, this incident was very wrong, we are sorry. Of course, that should never have happened and we discussed it with the President. We have to see what else we can do (to simplify the visa regime). I can see that we can make it faster and better but, but we still need to retain proper processes and procedures,” Cameron said, answering the question of Kazakhstan journalist who referred to the incident when armless Karipbek Kuyukov was denied a visa over lack of fingerprints and asked when the visa procedures would be simplified for Kazakhstan citizens. The journalist pointed out that Kazakhstan citizens now have to come to Almaty to provide their fingerprints to get the British visa. “I know about these concerns. This issue has been solved for business delegations and for business trips. As for other categories of people, the Prime-Minister said that he would instruct the authorities to consider the issue,” Nazarbayev said. “Kazakhstan has already simplified the visa procedures for British citizens and we expect return moves from the British party,” he said. The honorary envoy of Atom project Karipbek Kuyukov was planning to visit an anti-nuclear conference and his arts exhibition in Great Britain, but couldn't because of lack of fingerprints. He added that he went to the visa center in Almaty, where his face and side photos were taken and his physical condition was pretty obvious from those photos. According to the artist, the pictures clearly showed that he was disabled. However, British authorities have denied the visa for to Kazakhstan’s armless artist Karipbek Kuyukov requesting proper fingerprints from him. Later British Embassy in Kazakhstan apologized to the armless artist. By Renat Tashkinbayev