Fugitive chess master Bobby Fischer, who is fighting deportation to the United States, has asked Japan to allow him to go to Iceland, which has offered him a home

Fischer's spirits are high since Iceland last week extended a residency permit to the former world chess champion, who has been detained by Japanese immigration authorities for almost half a year, his lawyer said. Fischer, 61, is wanted in the United States for violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a chess game there in 1992. He has been held in Japan since July when he was stopped with a passport that US officials said was invalid. His lawyers filed documents today, including a hand-written letter by Fischer, with Japanese immigration officials seeking that he either be allowed to leave for Iceland on his own, or that he be deported to the North-Atlantic country rather than to the United States. "He's happy...I think his psychological condition is much better," Fischer's lawyer Masako Suzuki told. But Ms Suzuki added that Japanese immigration officials did not appear to be ready to send him out of the country any time soon. Fischer vanished after the 1992 Yugoslavia match, in which he beat his old rival Spassky and pocketed $3 million, but he resurfaced after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to praise the strikes in an interview with a Philippine radio station.