This Times of India story reveals that world #2 Vishy Anand is one of the invited players yet to sign and submit his player contract for the 2004 FIDE world championship in Tripoli (June 18-July 13).
Today FIDE announced that 114 of the 128 invitees had signed. A few days ago they posted something about extending the signing deadline until April 27 because their website was down.
Of course they desperately need Anand to play. He's a former champion and will be the favorite in Tripoli. In the Times story Anand said he wasn't yet ready to reveal his reasons.
This is really scandalous on ACP's behalf as their Board Members who were making a lot of noises about FIDE's organization of WCC 2004, have themselves signed the FIDE contract (for example, Bartlomiej Macieja) and Joel Lautier is on top of the New Reserved list (One can see this on www.fide.com), whereas Anand, Shirov, Bareev, Ponomariov, Khalifman, Gelfand, Karpov etc have not signed. It reamains to be seen if Lautier signs the FIDE contract or maintains his high moral standing.
How much of a world championship will it be when:
1. No one thinks the format really favors the strongest players, and
2. As of right now, 7 of the top 10 players aren't going to participate?
No wonder man-vs-computer matches are all the rage