Four months later after this interview in January 1996, PCA announced the lost of Intel as main sponsor… and later the end of the organization.
Follwing player critics who could not believe that the new FIDE proposal could be taken seriously as an alternative to the classical world championship cycle, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov explained his strategy in an interview published in the World Championship 1996 match book:
“One month after my election the Presidential Board met in Singapore and I proposed my programme. It included increasing the stability and advertising of FIDE, and attracting new countries to FIDE. Visits were planned for me to go to Asia, Latin America and Africa, to meet with heads of States and governments, to seek support for the development of chess and to found FIDE exhibition centres in every continent, as well as separate FIDE commercial centres to professionalise FIDE’s marketing strategy and attract multinational companies as general sponsors.
However the main tenet of my programme was the proposal to totally change the world chess championship system. I based these proposals on the assumption that the old system is in conflict with the modern world and has no real future. It is incapable of attracting sponsors. Nobody wants to give money for zonal and interzonal tournaments, or quarterfinal candidates matches; sponsors are not interested in them. Therefore within the old system it is impossible to raise the income of professional chess players. I proposed conducting the world chess championship as an Olympic system, with the participation of the world’s 100 top players and a 5 million dollar prize fund, to take place during the Christmas holidays. The competition would be a knock out system with eight rounds, and include Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov at the semi final stage.
The Olympic system is only fair way, from a sporting point of view, of organising an event with so many participants. My initial plan was to conduct the new championship every year, however I later came to the opinion that the championship should be played every other year with the chess Olympiad to be played each year in-between the championships.
People said that the new system subverts the tradition of the world chess championship, that it will even change the meaning of the world championship title. But this does not mean that the new system is necessarily bad. Sometimes tradition inhibits future development and has to be rejected. One of the main advantages of the proposed new system is the considerable increase in the prize fund, with its fair distribution amongst a wider number of professional players.
Many critics were afraid that under the new system champions will change too quickly while the world champion should be a phenomenon in chess. But no one is stopping the champion from defending his title in the new system, under equal conditions with everyone else. A change of champions would be nothing terrible as it would remove the halo of exclusiveness of one or two players, and with it the basis of many conflicts. There are now many top class professionals, and it will give them the opportunity to prove themselves.”
On March 7 after getting the acceptance from Karpov and Kamsky, FIDE President announced at a press conference in Paris that the Iraqi Chess Federation made a firm offer to organize the World Chess Championship Match between Karpov and Kamsky starting June 1 1996 in Baghdad with a prize fund of US$ 2 millions. In addition the two players offered to donate US$ 500,000 from the prize fund, through UNICEF, for medical benefit of the children in Iraq. The Presidential board in Doha confirmed the decision of its President but pressed by many European Federations and then by the US State Department and Treasury Department who forbid Kamsky to play in Iraq, the President announced the transfer of the match to his home town of Elista, Kalmyk Republic of Russia with the first game starting 6 June 1996.
As usual FIDE had to face few protests from G. Kamsky regarding logistic, impartiality of FIDE and his security. The American went to ask support of European and US Federations which met in April 1996 Utrecht , Holland (see annex).
The President was interviewed by Trud newspaper: TRUD: A month ago you announced the city of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, as the venue for the match between A. Karpov and G. Kamsky. Now you are going to name another city. What has happened in the meantime?
A: Dozens of articles appeared in the Russian and foreign mass media which entirely rejected Baghdad as the city candidate for the championship. Our desire was considered a direct assistance to Saddam Hussein. And the USA authorities had even warned us that should Kamsky go to Baghdad he would be put into prison for a period of 12 years and will be forced to pay a fine of one million dollars. After this Rustam Kamsky, his father and trainer, called me and said that they will not go to Baghdad because they are afraid to do so. We had foreseen that things could be like this. If Gata didn’t play, then it was announced by our Federation that we would replace him with Valery Salov, who had lost in the candidates’ match against Kamsky. All other details of the event were to be conducted in accordance with the scenario previously approved: the city of Baghdad, the day of the beginning of the match, which is the 1st of June, the prize fund of two million dollars. By the way the money was given by the elder son of Saddam Hussein.
TRUD: This scenario was called a “criminal act against chess” by Garry Kasparov in his interview with the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”. He said chess players will have to spend a lot of time and efforts to prove that they had no intention of demonstrating solidarity with the regime of Saddam Hussein, who was condemned by the entire international community. In the same interview Mr. Kasparov expressed the opinion that Mr. Ilumzhinov “had his own business interests in Baghdad”.
A: I don’t have any interest in Baghdad whatsoever. Russia has them. At the order of the Russian government I am in the process of negotiating with the leadership of Iraq with the goal to return to our country the money that Iraq owes it. It is an enormous sum of money. I have no intention to explain the whole situation in unpleasant detail, but the situation is such that we could never receive them.
TRUD: What about the initiative of Garry Kasparov, the world champion, to arrange a match between the champion of the Professional Chess Association and the champion of FIDE, in order to determine who is the one and only leader on the chess Olymp.
A: I can’t accept Mr. Kasparov’s proposal. I have already explained to all the great chess masters: all of you are geniuses, but let your genius remain within the framework of the 64 squares. And let FIDE resolve all the other problems. I have explained to all those great chess players that FIDE is not a servant of the world champion, independent of which side they are on. From now on FIDE is for all chess players. I will do everything so that they have no problems outside of the chessboard, I will do everything so that chess players will receive for their job more money than tennis players, soccer players, ice dancers. But they should not interfere with the FIDE business and they should not force it to adopt their own policies.
And now I would like to say a few words about Mr. Kasparov’s proposal in detail. We have adopted a new scheme according to which from now on the FIDE world championship will be conducted every year, as is already the case for most other sports. And the first such championship with a prize fund of five million dollars will be conducted at the end of this year, on December 20th to be more precise. We will invite Mr. Kasparov and the winner of the A. Karpov – G. Kamsky match to take part in the new world chess championship, starting from the semi-finals. But we hope that it will be no use for him to force us to follow the guidelines laid out by him.
You could ask me where I am going to get such a huge amount of money – five million dollars for the new world championship. The answer is very simple: it will be given by businessmen. By the way, why has FIDE nowadays found itself without money? The only reason for such a situation is the chaos that dominated the world of chess: two champions of the world emerged suddenly and the agreed way of competing for the chess crown has simply disappeared. Businessmen didn’t know where to put their money in order to assure the advertising of their products and companies. But now when we had explained to the businessmen what I have just explained to you, when they saw for themselves that order could be assured in the world of chess, and it couldn’t be distorted by any genius, I was addressed by dozens of international companies willing to put their money in chess. I have a whole line of them now.
Finally after getting enough insurance and also facing a possible disqualification, Gata accepted the conditions of the match. Few weeks before the start of the match Gata and Rustam (his father) Kamsky gave a long interview to E Glik:
Q: A few months ago Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov sent a letter to the president of FIDE Campomanes where they expressed their surprise regarding the matter. In response Karpov received a rude letter from Kasto P. Abundo, permanent secretary of FIDE. Have you received any answer?
Gata: We received some answer, a not very perspicuous one, it seemed to me. Actually it is my father who is in charge of the correspondence.
Rustam: It was a similar shameless answer as was received by Karpov. Abundo is not very original. The only thing we managed to achieve as a result of this correspondence was the information that the above mentioned competition will last until September 15. A lot of cities are ready to hold this duel but none of them can provide the corresponding to its level financial services. For half a century the material side of such matches has been the responsibility of FIDE and its president. But this time Campomanes demonstrates complete indifference and helplessness and prefers to gain his profit from another match, Kasparov – Anand, which does not bear any relation to FIDE…
Q: But still what is the perspective of the meeting Kamsky – Karpov?
Gata: We are trying to find sponsors, have made a few steps in this direction, but for the time being it has not been successful.
Rustam: And by the way we have already spent for it thousands of dollars. It is a pity that Anatoly with whom we have very friendly relations (chess battles are not counted) and who has a very high authority in the world and the corresponding connections acts not very activity.
The history of struggle for the chess crown shows that the initiative is always originated from the contender, and the champion sits on its throne and dictates his conditions. At present the situation is a bit different because in front of us there is still the unifying match…
Gata: Lately Kasparov has declared that if he wins in the PCA cycle and I win in FIDE cycle he won’t play with me because I already lost in match with Anand… I am not at all sure that I will be able to gain a victory over Karpov but these Carry’s words surprised me and made me very upset.
Q: But there were two matches Kamsky – Anand, one of them (Within the FIDE framework) you won and the other (within the PCA framework) you lost. Which of them in your opinion should be taken into consideration in the first place?
Gata: I think it is obvious but I would rather be silent not to look immodest.
Rustam: It is enough to remember that in the traditional world championship, i.e. as they say now, in FlOE version took part all the strongest chess players of the planet, except Kasparov. As for the PCA championship, a lot of grand masters besides Karpov, namely Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Salov and others ignored it.
Q: The gate was open for everyone?
Rustam: It means that PCA did not deserved credit being created, actually, by Kasparov alone. In this connection I have mentioned a lot of times that the 13th world championship is aimed to privatize all the grand masters. It was pleasant to find out that it revolted the deceased Michael Moiseevich Botvinnik as well. Kasparov wants to gain profit even from the champions which will come after him…
Q: But one should not ignore the Gata’s defeat from Vishvy Anand in the decisive match PCA?
Gata: While I was fighting with Salov in the final FIDE match Anand was intensively preparing to the duel with me. Was it fair?
Rustam: You see, the first match was played on equal conditions but the second – was not. A lot was said and written about that fact not once. Gata did everything possible in order to increase the interval between the two finals – the duel with Salov in Sanginagar finished uncommonly quickly. However right after it we were unexpectedly detained in India, I can say, arrested – the organizers declared that if we leave the country before the fixed date Gata would be deprived of the prize. It was real mockery!
Q: After confident victories, nearly defeats of Kramnik, Short, Anand, Salov everybody decided that it was impossible to stop Gata.
Gata: Perhaps somebody has put the evil eye on me.
Rustam: That series of victories could have been continued but you saw in what situation we found ourselves. To say nothing of the fact that in India Gata fell ill and did not manage to get properly prepared to the match with Anand. By the way, before meeting with Gata Salov had been winning in many competitions in which he took part for a long time but then lost tour games in turn without any victory. Perhaps it tells its own tale…
But still I can not believe that the match Karpov – Kamsky will be “spoiled”… Because in this case the whole harmonious system of returning back to the good old time when the world was ruled by only one chess king will be ruined.
Gata: I can just repeat that from the present leadership of FIDE and PCA we can expect anything even most incredible.
Rustam: The Professional Chess Association is a purely commercial organization and that is why it observes only those agreements which be profitable for it. The relations with people, chess traditions, morals all these things worry practically nobody. The main task of PCA is to suppress those who is in this or that way involved into the chess business. And according to its rules they get out of their way everybody who disturbs them. This is a true chess Mafia.
Karpov compared Kamsky with the young Kasparov of 1982/83: “He is primarily psychologically very strong. A very serious opponent whom I may not underestimate. After all Kamsky had more time to prepare for the match than me.”