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Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted by Washington for defying sanctions on Yugoslavia, plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship, a lawyer working on his appeal against deportation from Japan said on Friday. Fischer, one of the chess world's great eccentrics, was detained at Tokyo's Narita airport last month when he tried to leave for Manila on a passport U.S. officials say was invalid. Japanese immigration officials rejected Fischer's initial appeal against deportation and his lawyer, Masako Suzuki, has filed a second plea to Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa. In a handwritten note made available to the media, Fischer, 61, said...

TOKYO - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has appealed Japanese plans to deport him to the United States and hopes to find political asylum in a third country, a friends said Wednesday. Fischer was detained by Japanese immigration officials last week after trying to leave the country for the Philippines. Officials say his passport was invalid, and on Tuesday confirmed that he was being processed for deportation. Fischer is wanted in the United States for playing a rematch against Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992. Yugoslavia was under international sanctions at the time, and U.S....

<p>The chess community in New York expressed mixed views on the arrest in Japan of Bobby Fischer, the Brooklyn-raised reclusive former world chess champion, on charges of traveling on a revoked U.S. passport.</p> <p>Fischer, 61, was arrested last week by Japanese immigration officials as he tried to fly out of Tokyo's Narita Airport to the Philippines using a passport that the U.S. government reportedly revoked last year.</p>

Search for Bobby Fischer Ends at Japanese Airport, With Fugitive Chess King Captured Eric Talmadge/Associated Press TOKYO (AP) - In a bizarre end game, Bobby Fischer - the chess world's most eccentric star - was taken into custody after trying to fly out of Japan with an invalid passport. Checkmate. Wanted at home for attending a 1992 match in Yugoslavia despite international sanctions, the American former world champion had managed to stay one move ahead of the law by living abroad and being sheltered by chess devotees. It was not immediately clear if Fischer would be handed over to the...

TOKYO (AP) - Immigration authorities have detained former world chess champion Bobby Fischer in Japan, an official said Friday. Fischer, wanted in the United States for attending a 1992 chess match in Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions, was stopped at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Tuesday, an airport spokesman said on condition of anonymity. Fischer, 61, was trying to leave Japan for the Philippines, the spokesman said. He refused to elaborate, citing Fischer's privacy. Officials were preparing to deport him to the United States, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said Friday, citing unnamed sources. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said...

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer arrived in Washington on Monday for a three-day visit expected to focus on developments in Iraq as criticism mounts in Germany over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces. In a further sign of warming transatlantic ties in recent months, Fischer became the latest German leader to pay a visit to the U.S. capital on Monday evening. His visit -- expected to focus on developments in Iraq and the planned handover of power next month to an interim Iraqi administration in Baghdad -- however comes at a tense time. As the scandal over the...

      Aktuell   China's participation in atomic smuggling Fissionable material for the coalition by  Matthias Gebauer The new dislosures about China's role in the sale of nuclear know-how has the discussions over the export of the Hanau fuel element plant boiling up again. Some Greens are threatening openly with the end of the coalition if Chancellor Schröder allows the deal to go through. MARCO-URBAN.DE Governing-Team Schröder/Fischer: Looking for a solution without losing face. Berlin - Green party leader Angelika Beer didn't want to say much about the Hanau topic during her press conference on Monday. "There isn't any new position",...

MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Events in Iraq have proved Germany right in opposing the war, but Berlin wants to help in bringing peace, Foreign Minister Joscka Fischer declared Saturday. "The Federal (German) Government feels that events have proven the position it took at the time to be right," Fischer told the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. "It was our political decision not to join the coalition because we were not, and are still not convinced of the validity of the reasons for war." At last year's conference, Fischer clashed with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the...

DEBATE Ein Herz für Saddam By  Henryk M. Broder Never before could a deposed dictator reckon with so much sympathy. What does the suffering of the killed and tortured mean, anyway, compared to the humiliation of being filmed during a saliva probe? DDP Dictator Hussein after his capture: As if Mother Theresa had been caught dodging fares. Hardly was the grand ZDF-Gala "Ein Herz für Kinder" (Have a Heart for Children) with Thomas Gottschalk as host and many VIP's as donation gatherers over, than the preparations for the next Super-Gala, with even more prominent participants had begun: "Ein Herz für Saddam" (Have a Heart for Saddam). Scarcely had the deposed dictator...

American efforts to push Arab states and the Palestinians to embrace democracy may be a case of too little too soon, suggests Joschka Fischer, the wry ex-radical given the task of stabilizing Germany's ragged relations with the United States. "Modernization in the Middle East is not only about politics. It is also about development and economics," the German foreign minister said the other day during his second fence-mending visit to Washington in six months. Broad political change of the kind envisioned by President Bush will come to the region only when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been resolved, he added. Fischer...

Statement by Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom following meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer Berlin, October 22, 2003 (Communicated by the Foreign Minister's Media Adviser) Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom with German FM Joschka Fischer in Berlin (Oct 22, 2003) I have just concluded a very constructive and important meeting with my good friend, Foreign Minister Fischer. Our discussions covered the full range of issues, including bilateral relations between Israel and Germany, the Middle East peace process and other regional issues of mutual concern. The Foreign Minister updated me on his visit to Tehran this week. I reiterated the cardinal importance...

Germany's FM Fischer gets divorced, again Thu Sep 18, 1:10 PM ET Add Entertainment - AFP to My Yahoo! BERLIN (AFP) - Germany's charismatic foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, has divorced for the fourth time, court officials in Berlin said. At 55, Fischer is Germany's most popular politician and the figurehead of the Greens, the junior partner in the ruling centre-left coalition. But his marriages have been less successful than his politics. His divorce with Nicola Leske, a 34-year-old journalist, was confirmed by a court in Berlin earlier this month, a court official said. The couple got to know each other...

BERLIN - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer asserted Wednesday that US policy in Iraq had failed while calling for German-American ties to be redefined on the basis of equal partners. "The American domino theory under which a liberated Iraq was supposed to stabilise the Middle East and democratise one country after another has not proven right," said Fischer in an interview with the news magazine Stern. He added: "The decisive question now is whether a strategy which has not worked will be replaced by one that can." Fischer said Germany wanted a swift handover of sovereignty in Baghdad to Iraqi...

Wednesday August 20th, 2003, 17:42 Berlin also not sending any soldiers even after the attack on the UN Berlin (dpa) -- The Federal Government is not considering a German Armed Forces deployment even after the devastating attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq. The Federal Government explained in Berlin on Wednesday that the question never arose. In the opinion of the Union [CDU - lj], this refusal endangers the consent of the USA to a broader mandate by the United Nations. Coalition and opposition support a stronger role by the UN and spoke in dismay about the death of...

New Survey Technology One out of two doesn't know that Schröder is Chancellor A new online interview method has brought to light some amazing results: Hardly half of the Germans know what Gerhard Schröder, Joschka Fisher, or Angela Merkel do professionally. Indeed, 99 per cent of the people asked by the polling institute Forsa in the until now unpublished survey recognized Schröder in a photo, but only 51 per cent correctly answered which office he holds. For the survey of 1630 citizens the opinion researchers used so-called set top boxes, with whose help the participants answer by remote control questions...

Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister, has urged the US not to lose sight of its responsibility to build a "new status quo" in the Middle East, a task he said could take decades. "It has always been our view that the US, with its huge power, would find it relatively easy to move into Baghdad. However, it was also always our view that [with victory in Iraq], the US would become not a power in the Middle East but the power in the Middle East, with the ambition to shape a new status quo . . . This is a...

It is unlikely that a man stranger and more mysterious than the American Bobby Fischer ever was, is or will ever appear in the chess world. He is a man about whom legends are composed already during his life. But it is more frequent that no news is available about Fischer at all. The man is elusive. Nobody can say for sure where Bobby Fischer has been living within over the past decades, or whether he is still alive at all. He was to celebrate his 60th birthday this March. The great chess player is some a kind of a...

The Lady with the sharp tongue USA OVER SCHRÖDER "It's best to ignore him" George W. Bush's security adviser can imagine improvements in relations with Germany only without Gerhard Schröder. Condoleezza Rice regards the résumé of Joschka Fischer as not suitable for a statesman. Further ... P O L I T I CS The security adviser of George W. Bush can imagine improvements in relations with Germany only without Gerhard Schröder. From FOCUS-information, Condoleezza Rice recently confided to a German in a conversation: The relationship Bush-Schröder will never be what it had been and how it should be. Indeed,...

07/03/2003 Press ReleaseSC/7682 NOTE: FOLLOWING ARE SUMMARIES OF STATEMENTS MADE TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING TODAY, 7 MARCH. A COMPLETE SUMMARY OF THE MEETING WILL APPEAR AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING AS PRESS RELEASE SC/7682. Background When the Security Council met this morning to consider the situation between Iraq and Kuwait, it had before it a note from the Secretary-General (document S/2003/232) transmitting the twelfth quarterly report of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284 (1999), covering UNMOVIC&#8217;s activities from 1 December 2002...

Apr. 8, 2003 Editorial: 'To Joshka Fischer' Dear Joschka: It is nice to have you here, because we appreciate the visit of every friend, and we see in you one of Israel's most credible and reliable friends in Europe. Anyone who doubts this need only read the speech you gave on your last visit in May, when you received an honorary doctorate (your first degree, as you happily confessed) from the University of Haifa. You spoke candidly about German history and the hope that "through this unwavering solidarity of democratic Germany with Israel, trust and sometimes even friendship could develop...