AThe Central New Jersey Home News New Brunswick, New Jersey Tuesday, August 10, 1965 - Page 10
Fischer Impasse Delights Fidel
New York (AP) — The refusal of the U.S. government to allow chess champion Bobby Fischer to go to Cuba for an international tournament is being viewed by Prime Minister Fidel Castro as “a propaganda victory for Cuba.”
Dispatches from Havana said Castro is “delighted” by the government's refusal and has taken personal charge of arranging for Fischer's participation by telephone from New York.
The U.S. State Department rejected an application from the 22-year-old chess champion to travel to the Communist island. It said permission is granted only to journalists, businessmen with longstanding interests in Cuba and persons on humanitarian missions.
An Havana source said Castro decided to pay the heavy expenses necessary to maintain open telephone and telegraph lines eight hours daily during the month-long tournament, which begins Aug. 25.
Castro is reported to view the occasion as a publicity windfall for Cuba that “would serve to call attention to the unfairness of the American blockade of Cuba.”
Participants this year will come from the Soviet Union, Bulgaria. West Germany, Sweden, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and other countries.
According to Cuban officials, Fischer will dictate plays to an international referee in New York who will transmit them by an open telephone line to Havana. Plays by his opponents will be relayed the same way.
