Friendless Gaddafi checks in with chess mate

Libyan leader tells visiting World Chess Federation president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, he has no intention of leaving the country

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• Xan Rice in Tripoli
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 June 2011 13.15 BST
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Muammar Gaddafi plays chess with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Tripoli, Libya in Al-Arabiya television pictures. Photograph: AL ARABIYA / HANDOUT/EPA
Embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi spent part of Sunday plotting his next move – on the chessboard. With war raging in the country, the 69-year-old "Brother Leader" found time for a game with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the Russian multi-millionaire who heads the World Chess Federation (Fide). Like Gaddafi, Ilyumzhinov is known for his eccentricities, including a famous claim that he once hosted aliens on his balcony in Moscow. The men met for about two hours, playing chess on a board crafted by artisans in Kalmykia, the small, Buddhist constituent republic in Russia that Ilyumzhinov governed from 1993 to 2010. On Sunday night Libyan state television broadcast a clip of the match, with Gaddafi, who was wearing his trademark sunglasses, appearing relaxed despite his predicament. Gaddafi has been in hiding with his family for many weeks, fearful of being hit by one of Nato's bombs. But Ilyumzhinov told the Russian Interfax news agency that their meeting "was not held in some kind of bunker", but rather an administrative building in Tripoli. Ilyumzhinov, a chess fanatic who has been president of Fide since 1995 – with some controversy – later met Gaddafi's eldest son, Muhammad, who heads Libya's Olympic committee. "We also played chess, using Sicilian defence," Ilyumzhinov said. During the meeting, Muammar Gaddafi stressed that he had no intention of leaving Libya and, according to Ilyumzhinov, said he did not understand what post he had to quit. "I am not a prime minister, not a president, and not a king. I do not hold any post in Libya, and therefore I have no position I have to step down from," Ilyumzhinov quoted Gaddafi as saying. Gaddafi has held absolute power in Libya since orchestrating a coup in 1969. Senior government officials claim he is willing to step away from public life and government to become a sort of constitutional monarch. Opposition forces leading the rebellion reject this option. A non-Libyan official who met Gaddafi in recent weeks said he appeared deeply affected by the loss of his son Saif al-Arab and three young grandchildren in a Nato bombing raid in late April. Gaddafi and his acolytes are also gripped by a deep sense of betrayal: by the west, which had welcomed him back into the international fold in recent years, by the Arab world and by Africa, where the Libyan leader spread so much cash. Indeed, Gaddafi appears to have very few friends left, with China and Russia having made overtures to the rebel administration in Benghazi in recent weeks. He does still have President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela on side, however, and, of course, Ilyumzhinov, whom he met when Tripoli hosted the World Chess Championships in 2004. Ilyumzhinov was visiting Libya as part of Fide's "Year of Africa" programme to promote the game on the continent.