A SPECIAL visitor from Kazakhstan dropped by The Comet offices yesterday (Wednesday) as he took in a tour of Stevenage. Dulat Abish came all the way from Shimkent in the southern part of the country, which has been twinned with Stevenage since 1991. Seei

A SPECIAL visitor from Kazakhstan dropped by The Comet offices yesterday (Wednesday) as he took in a tour of Stevenage.

Dulat Abish came all the way from Shimkent in the southern part of the country, which has been twinned with Stevenage since 1991.

Seeing behind the scenes at The Comet was of particular interest to Mr Abish.

Back in Kazakhstan, he runs a television station, radio channel and two newspapers and was keen to see how we do it here in England.

Fitting us into his eight-day schedule, Mr Abish said he was thoroughly enjoying his first visit to this country and spoke highly of Stevenage.

He said: "It's a very nice city, very cosy and small with its own history, which is fantastic.

"The first thing that struck me is that the people are very cultural and it seems very law-abiding."

Editor at The Comet, Darren Isted, shared an editorial tête-à-tête with Mr Abish, leaving him with a taste of the area's favourite local newspaper.

Mr Abish said: "I was very happy to see what technology they have here and I can see that The Comet is a great paper, with very good design.

"We have a similar format but we only have 16 pages, compared with 200 here!

"But this year we are planning to make ours bigger and also daily rather than weekly."

It is hoped that Mr Abish's visit will help strengthen the ties between the twinned towns of Stevenage and Shimkent and the liaison between two local papers from opposite ends of Europe takes a big step towards this.