Iceland rejects request to revoke Fischer offer

Chess champion who won fame in Reykjavik would be welcomed back

Associated Press

AP Bobby Fischer

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Iceland has rejected a U.S. request to drop the offer of a residency permit for former chess champion Bobby Fischer, officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Ambassador James Gadsden had asked Iceland last week to withdraw its offer because Fischer is wanted in the United States on criminal charges on charges of violating international sanctions against Yugoslavia for playing chess there in 1992.

Monday, Foreign Secretary David Oddsson invited Gadsden to a meeting and told the U.S. ambassador that the Icelandic government stood by its offer, Icelandic officials said.

Gadsden was told that Iceland wanted to recognize its historic connection with Fischer, who the country has held in great esteem since he won the chess World Championship in Reykjavik in 1972.

Oddsson also told Gadsden that Fischer's alleged U.S. crime had exceeded Iceland's statute of limitations, and for that reason Iceland would not be bound by a U.S. extradition request if the chess player moved to Iceland from Japan.

"Nothing has been withdrawn," Gunnar Smari Gunnarsson, Iceland's permanent secretary of state, said Tuesday. "It is now up to the Japanese government. We are not pressing the matter, but if Fischer comes here, he will be let into the country."

Fischer, 61, is being held in detention in Japan, where he was caught trying to board a flight for the Philippines with an invalid passport in July.

Fischer, who has said he would like to move to Iceland, is fighting a deportation order to the United States.

Japanese officials have said he could go to a third country only if the United States refuses to take him.

The 1992 match in Yugoslavia was against Boris Spassky and was a rematch of the 1972 contest in Reykjavik.