MOSCOW. June 14 (Interfax) - FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov says his visit to Libya was not a political one and his meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was not planned beforehand.
"My visit was not a political or a mediation one," Ilyumzhinov told a press conference held in the Interfax central office on Monday.
Ilyumzhinov said he initially had no plans to have an official meeting with Gaddafi.
Ilyumzhinov said his visit to Libya was planned by the FIDE General Assembly because the 2011 year has been declared by FIDE the Year of Africa. The FIDE president said he had visited some other African countries before Libya, in particular the South African Republic, Zambia, and Nigeria.
Ilyumzhinov also said a lot of Western media are currently broadcasting to Libya, while Libyan television broadcasts have been halted outside of Libya.
"We checked into a hotel yesterday. There was a TV set in the hall, I think it was BBC. I would like to say that none of the Western channels have been blocked. You can watch anything in hotels, including Russian television," he said.
Ilyumzhinov also said that during his visit to Tripoli he had extended his condolences about the death of Gaddafi's relatives, in particular, his son and grandchildren, in a recent NATO bombing.
According to earlier reports, several shells hit the building where Gaddafi's family was located in the NATO bombing of Tripoli on April 30. Gaddafi's 29-year-old son, three-year-old granddaughter, and two two-year-old grandsons were killed in that bombing. Ilyumzhinov said the Libyan leader had told him that he had left that building several minutes prior to the bombing.