Former chess champion Garry Kasparov is to try to take the game's top
job from a multi-millionaire who says he was once abducted by aliens.
The showdown with fellow-Russian Kirsan Ilyumzhinov will take place on
the sidelines of the Chess Olympiad in the Norwegian Arctic city of
Tromso.
Ilyumzhinov has been head of the World Chess Federation for 19 years.
However, his critics accuse him of being a Kremlin puppet with ties to
brutal dictators.
Kasparov, 51, is a noted human rights campaigner and an opponent of
Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
He accuses Ilyumzhinov of being too close to Putin and says his
presidency of the World Chess Federation has been marked by "abuse and
favouritism".
"Every Russian embassy in the world has been mobilised to support
Ilyumzhinov and to keep him in office," Kasparov told Norwegian
newspaper Dagbladet.
"It's not about chess. This is a pure political fight."
Ilyumzhinov, 52, claims he was once abducted by aliens who
communicated telepathically and took him to another planet in a giant
spaceship.
His critics say such claims have driven sponsors away from the game.
He has also been accused of damaging the reputation of the chess
federation by cultivating close ties to dictators including Saddam
Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, he said: "Chess is
beyond politics. [That] is why Kasparov is so dangerous. This is why
it's necessary to fight him. This is what the chess world was afraid
of: Kasparov started mixing chess with politics."
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