By Mark Landler
ASTANA, Kazakhstan — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke about the virtues of an open society here on Tuesday, at the start of her first overseas trip since the release of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables containing blunt appraisals of foreign countries and leaders.
As if to underline the awkwardness of the timing, Kazakhstan’s leaders are among those cited by American diplomats in the cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, with juicy descriptions of their lifestyles — from a private Elton John concert for the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president, to the president’s baronial horse farm, to a crazy night of club-hopping by the prime minister.
A State Department official said that Mrs. Clinton had not read the leaked cables, nor raised them with the president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She is scheduled to meet him at a conference here on Wednesday.
But two prominent women who came to hear her speak at a university laughed off the issue, saying that disclosures about high-living leaders were old hat in their country, and that these would hurt neither the standing of the United States nor its relationship with Kazakhstan.
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