TOKYO - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday to help him renounce U.S. citizenship as he announced plans to marry a leading Japanese chess official, his lawyer said.

Fischer, wanted in the United States for allegedly violating international sanctions on former Yugoslavia, was detained in Japan last month when trying to travel on a revoked American passport. He has been fighting a deportation to the United States.

Fischer's attorney, Masako Suzuki, said she faxed a letter to Powell demanding that an American consular officer be sent to the chess great's detention center to accept his renunciation of U.S. citizenship.

In the letter, Suzuki accused the embassy of refusing to send an official to Fischer, requiring him to come to the embassy in person. Japanese officials, however, will not allow him to make the trip, she said.

"Although renouncing U.S. citizenship is a legal right, the U.S. Embassy in Japan has made it impossible for Mr. Fischer to exercise his right," said the letter.

A separate statement from Suzuki also said Fischer and Japan Chess Association President Miyoko Watai had signed marriage papers.

It was unclear whether Japanese officials would accept the marriage application.

Fischer became an American icon when, at the height of the Cold War, he defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a series of games in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. The win made him the first U.S. world champion in more than a century.

Increasingly erratic and reclusive, he lost his title as world champion in 1978 and then largely vanished from the public eye until he reappeared to play a rematch in the former Yugoslavia against Spassky in 1992.

Though Fischer won, and took home more than $3 million in prize money, he played in violation of U.N. sanctions and has been wanted in the United States ever since.