GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain may not be able to name the leaders of foreign countries, but that doesn’t mean leaders of foreign countries don’t know who Cain is.

The New York Times reports that in a meeting between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Karzai raised comments made by Cain proudly professing ignorance about Uzbekistan and mocking the country’s name. Cain said a few weeks ago he didn’t know the “president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” then categorized the Central Asian country — a crucial supply route in the U.S.-led war to support Karzai’s government in Afghanistan — as “small and insignificant.”

The Times reports that in Karzai’s meeting with Clinton:

Mr. Karzai was asking Mrs. Clinton about remarks Mr. Cain made recently in a television interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. [...]

“He’s a former pizza company owner,” she said to Mr. Karzai.

“Is he that?” He replied, speaking in English.

“Oh, yes. He started something called Godfather’s pizza,” she said.

“Yes, I see, I see,” Mr. Karzai said.

Mrs. Clinton then turned to the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and went on, laughingly. “The president was saying he saw a news clip about how Mr. Cain had said I don’t even know the names of all these presidents of all these countries, you know, like whatever …”

“All the ’stans whatever,” Mr. Karzai interjected, referring to the countries of Central and Southern Asia, including his.

“All the ’stans places,” Mrs. Clinton repeated.

Mr. Karzai did not seem to take offense, displaying what appeared to be an astute understanding of campaigning in a democratic country. “That wasn’t right,” he said, “but anyway, that’s how politics are.”

Cain later laughed off his Uzbekistan comment, bizarrely blaming liberal African-American commenters Harry Belafonte and Cornel West for not “want(ing) a lot of people to wake up, especially black people.”

After a series of gaffes like the “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan” comment, Cain’s faced scathing criticism about his foreign policy bona fides. But he still insists that he’s “not as foreign policy dumb as they think,” and that really he is just lying in wait to — at some undetermined time in the future — wow everyone with knowledge from his months of studying crucial international issues.

But if his statements are so outlandish that even foreign leaders are picking up on them and declaring, “That wasn’t right,” a potential future President Cain may already be causing relationships with U.S. allies to deteriorate.

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain defended his decidedly unserious approach to foreign policy issues on Fox News last night. Host Sean Hannity asked about his botched foreign policy answer this weekend, but Cain dodged and somehow blamed liberal commentators Harry Belafonte and Princeton professor Cornel West for attacking him because “they don’t want black people to think for themselves.”

Hannity referenced a friendly interview this weekend with the religious right Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) where Cain was asked about the president of Uzbekistan, to which he said: “When they ask me, who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan? I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know.” Cain laughed off Hannity’s question and implied Belafonte and West — whom he initially called “Colonel” — are just trying to suppress his popularity among black voters. Here’s the exchange:

HANNITY: My good friend David Brody had an interview with you on CBN at the Value Voter Summit in which you got a tremendous response. You keep winning these straw polls.

Your numbers are going through the roof and continue to. And he said are you ready for all the gotcha questions? Who is the president of Pakistan [SIC], et cetera, and you had a pretty funny answer.

CAIN: Heh heh heh heh. Yes, you know, ever since that Florida straw poll, there’s been a big bulls-eye on my back. It’s coming from Harry Belafonte, it’s coming from Colonel — you know, from Professor West, it’s coming from anybody who do not like the fact that I, as an American black conservative, am in a position to be able to speak my mind and tell the truth and wake people up.

They don’t want a lot of people to wake up, especially black people. I’ve also said, Sean, which also received some criticism, that a large percentage of American black people are thinking for themselves. That’s the good news.

But people like Harry Belafonte, Professor West, and others who attack me, they don’t want black people to think for themselves. And this is why they are so upset with Herman Cain, who is now moving up into the top tier for the Republican presidential nomination, and that people are listening to me.

They don’t want me to wake people up and get them to read the fine print and think for themselves.

Watch the video:

It’s not clear where exactly in the “fine print” it says that it’s okay for Cain to, as ThinkProgress’s Matt Yglesias put it, go about running a presidential campaign “without him taking the process seriously at all.” But Cain is nonetheless managing a surge in the polls, all the while deflecting his own ignorance by pointing to attacks from other commentators supposedly trying to keep black America down.

Cain’s been exchanging jabs with Belafonte and West for a couple days now over Cain’s comments that he doesn’t think racism “holds anybody back in a big way today.”

At least Cain didn’t try to answer Hannity’s question about the leader of Pakistan (an apparent case of the Fox Host confusing Uzbekistan with Pakistan). As we learned this weekend, Cain won’t figure out the leaders of foreign countries until he’s getting ready to get on a plane to visit them.

In an interview with the religious right Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain badly bungled Uzbekistan’s name and said his standard answer to “‘gotcha’ questions” would be that he doesn’t have answers.

In a friendly interview spotted by Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen, CBN host David Brody asked Cain if he was ready for tough questions such as naming the president of Uzbekistan:

BRODY: Are you ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions that are coming from the media and others on foreign policy? Like, who’s the president of Uzbekistan?…

CAIN: I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

And then I’m going to say how’s that going to create one job?

Watch the video:

Cain added that Uzbekistan was “insignificant” to U.S. national security interests:

Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world — I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going. When I get ready to go visit that country, I’ll know who it is. But until then, I want to focus on the big issues that we need to solve.

With U.S.-Pakistan tensions on the rise, the Obama administration is in discussions with Uzbekistan about increasing military supply routes to the U.S.-led Afghanistan war through the former-Soviet republic, whose authoritarian president — Islam Karimov — has some human rights issues.

Cain’s mocking and ignorance of Uzbekistan come at the tail end of a tough week for the former pizza chain CEO on foreign policy, even as his star slid up a notch in the Republican nomination contest.

Lately, Cain’s been assailed by conservatives and liberals alike. On Wednesday, neoconservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin decried Cain’s “lack of rudimentary knowledge about foreign policy.” And an earlier Cain gaffe about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict led off a Saturday front page New York Times article about the GOP race’s inattention to global affairs (despite the nomination frontrunner Mitt Romney’s largely substance-free fear-mongering and general hawkishness).