FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov took part in the 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, held in the University of Illinois at Chicago. The summit was attended by five former heads of states, each of whom have received this honorable award. US President Mr. Barak Obama addressed the participants with a recorded video message at the first plenary session.
Ilyumzhinov (right) with the Chair of the 12th World Summit Mikhail
Gorbachev (middle)
The two and friends and Gorbachev is the patron of FIDE's Chess in
Schools programme
With the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Songay Lobsang, Prime Minister of the
Tibetan
government-in-exile. Ilyumzhinov and Gorbachev are wearing traditional Kalmykian
scarfs
There is a special connection between the Dalai Lama and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who was President of the Buddhist Republic of Kalmykia, where he built a large number of temples. The two spoke about the bilateral cooperation between FIDE and the Government of Tibet and "agreed to continue the discussion during the President's visit to Tibet in May," we are told. In Tibet? We think that the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile, might have some problems getting a visa to enter the country...
Video of the encounter between the Dalai Lama and Mikhail Gorbachev
The FIDE President and Lobsang with the 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Prof. Jody
Williams
Kirsan with American film director and Oscar winner Oliver
Stone
Stone has written, directed and produced movies like Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, World Trade Center and W. He and Ilyumzhinov "discussed the role of cinema in a struggle for peace, the younger generation and the influence of chess on this process."
With Sean Penn, the
Oscar-winning actor, who received a 2012
Peace Summit Award
for his work to rebuild and aid the victims of the devastating 2010 earthquake
in Haiti.
With former US Presidents Bill Clinton...
... and Jimmy Carter, with whom he spoke about the chess development in the
country,
the recognition of chess as a sport and the role of chess in the educational
process.
With Mary Kerry Kennedy,
human rights activist and writer. Kerry is the seventh of
the eleven children of Robert and Ethel Kennedy.
With Nobel Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, hero of the Polish revolution
and later President of his country
During his visit to Chicago the FIDE President met with the Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, who is in charge of the largest prison in the United States, with nearly 11,000 prisoners serving a sentence.
The issues of the social rehabilitation of the former prisoners, their leisure organization, introduction of chess education in the penitentiary institutions and other issues of possible mutual cooperation were discussed at the meeting. It was decided to organize a chess tournament between prisoners, including a national championship among the convicts.
The FIDE President alsovisited the chess club headed, by IO, IA Sevan Muradian...
... and participated in a blitz tournament in the club
Source: FIDE
