With a little help from our friend in Scotland

AUTHORITIES in Kazakhstan who ran into problems trying to get the approval of the Beatles for a statue to be erected in their honour have found an unlikely saviour in a Scottish MEP.

Struan Stevenson, one of Scotland's two Tory Euro MPs, has strong links with the former Soviet state and managed to act as an intermediary between officials and the surviving former members of the group.

As a result, a five-ton bronze sculpture of the Beatles sitting on a bench will be unveiled next month in the city of Almaty, with the approval of Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison's widow, Olivia.

The statue was the idea of Rinat Shayakhmetov, an avid Beatles fan since his childhood, who works for a bank in Kazakhstan and spent months persuading wealthy sponsors in the country to back the 50,000 project.

The statue is the work of the acclaimed Armenian sculptor Edward Kazarian and will stand outside Almaty's main concert hall.

Mr Stevenson, a personal friend of Mr Shayakhmetov, spoke to McCartney - who then contacted Starr and the other ex-Beatles' widows - and obtained permission for the sculpture to be made.

The monument is being completed as Kazakhstani officials begin a huge public relations operation to repair what they claim is the damage done to their country's image after the success of Sacha Baron Cohen's comic character Borat, a Kazakh reporter who heads to the West.

Borat, who spouts anti-Semitic remarks and portrays Kazakhstan as a land of drunks and inbred degenerates, has caused outrage in the country.

Earlier this year, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the president of Kazakhstan, asked George Bush, his United States counterpart, to help him fight what he called insults against all Kazakhs ahead of the release of Baron Cohen's film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.