Meanwhile, the FIDE Championships is in for a further blow, as Alexander Morozevich, reckoned to be one of best fresh talents, has still not signed the papers. He is said to be against many of the conditions laid down by FIDE. And, in a separate move, the women's world champion, ZsuZsa (Susan) Polgar, has also decided against playing in Las Vegas.

Part of thetranscript of Karpov's interview is, curiously, available on Garry Kasparov's site. It quotes Karpov as saying: ``FIDE says: `Look, the World Champion holds on tight to his place, to his title, and he opposes the rest of the Chess World'. FIDE has already done so twice, the first time was a year ago, when we signed a contract and I defended my title in Lausanne for a period of two years. That was when I found out not immediately though, but after the Elista Congress that FIDE administration, including its President Iliumzhinov, had worked out the following tactics. If Anand becomes the new world champion, then the next championship will be held according to the rules, i.e. in two years' time. But if Karpov retains his title, then in order to get rid of him as soon as possible, the championship will be held in a year, i.e. in 1999!''

``Then there occurred a scandalous situation, with an overt and very abrupt face-to-face meeting. As a result, we signed an agreement last year in Elista, and FIDEauthorities, according to that agreement, engaged to submit the date of holding the World Championship to my approval. It was said in this agreement that the Championship should be held in January 1999, and if it is not held at that time, another date of holding the event should be agreed separately. It turned out that FIDE could not hold the event in January, so I phoned Iliumzhinov and said I would like to meet and discuss the probable date of holding the Championship.

``I was unequivocally told that everything depended on Las Vegas, on its reaction, on the terms that were suitable for Las Vegas, and only afterwards FIDE would hold negotiations with me. In the long run, nobody agreed anything with me and now it turned into a very serious problem, which can probably be solved only in court, Olympic or American.''

Karpov goes on to say that on March 12, his lawyer in Switzerland received a document, which ran as follows: ``We are planning to fix the date of the Las Vegas Championship for August 1999 andearnestly recommend that Karpov accepts these terms.'' He feels it sounded like an ultimatum. Karpov and his lawyer are said to have sent a reply saying that August, unfortunately, was unsuitable for Karpov.

``And there were several reasons. Firstly, I had different plans for this month, and mainly, I could not properly plan the entire period of preparations for the event. Had they told me about it before hand, I would not have played in Dortmund, may be I would not have played in Frankfurt, either. I came back to Moscow from the tournament in Germany only yesterday, it is very tiring,'' added Karpov.