The Greenville News Greenville, South Carolina Tuesday, February 22, 1972 - Page 19
Chess President Rejects Protest
Amsterdam (UPI) — The president of the World Chess Federation rejected Monday a Soviet protest of his decision that the world chess championship match between Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union and challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States should be held in Belgrade and Reykjavik.
The president, Max Euwe, said the Soviet Chess Federation had told him in a telegram that it did not agree with the decision, which it said violated the rules.
He said he had cabled back that the World Chess Congress of 1971 stipulated that the federation's president should decide where the championship match should be held if the two players could not agree on a site.
Spassky and Fischer had chosen several sites, Spassky included Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital, among his choices and Fischer chose Belgrade on his list of sites. Neither could agree, and two weeks ago Euwe announced that the 24-game match would be divided evenly between the two cities as a compromise, assuming the match went the distance of 24 games.
The first 12 games will begin in Belgrade in July.
Euwe also said he had told the Russians that there was no special body within the federation to deal with their protest and that the matter only could be considered at the congress session in the fall. He said that would be too late.
Euwe suggested that the protest be discussed at the scheduled March 2-3 meeting in Moscow of the International Federation Bureau, but he pointed out that the bureau does not have the authority to cancel the decision about the site of the match.
Fischer won the right to challenge Spassky by beating Soviet champion Tigran Petrosian in Buenos Aires last year.
