Gorbachev to Launch Chess Peace Initiative from Kansas

     Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev travels to central Kansas later this year to open a worldwide campaign promoting peace through chess.
     The 1990 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize arrives in Lindsborg on October 29.
     Lindsborg has become an international chess destination in recent years. It's home to the Karpov Chess School, one of dozens established around the world by seven-time world champion Anatoly Karpov.
     Karpov helped create Chess for Peace and invited Gorbachev to help inaugurate the year-long campaign in Lindsborg. Students worldwide will play matches via the Internet, with the winners taking part next June in a week-long Chess for Peace festival in Lindsborg.
     Mikhail Korenman heads the Lindsborg school. Korenman says the inspiration for Chess for Peace lies 1,500 years in the past, when chess was used in India to settle disputes without violence. 
 

Associated Press, August 30, 2005