The government will field former Japanese ambassador to the United Nations and the Crown Princess' father, Hisashi Owada, in an election for the post of a U.N. International Court of Justice judge, scheduled for late 2002, government sources said Wednesday.
The sources said that the government will make a formal decision by the end of this year to field the 68-year-old former top career diplomat in the election to succeed Shigeru Oda, a retiring Japanese ICJ judge.
Oda, a 75-year-old jurist, has been elected three times in a row to the ICJ post since 1976. Oda's third nine-year term will expire in early 2003. If Owada is elected as an ICJ judge, he will be the third Japanese to take the post, after Kotaro Tanaka and Oda. The late Tanaka served as an ICJ judge from 1961 to 1970.