Former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Saturday she will seek to resume her career in national politics as an independent in a bid to realign Japanese politics.

The outspoken daughter of the late former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka resigned from the House of Representatives in August 2002, following allegations she had misused state funds for her secretaries, but used a news conference to break her silence on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to which she still officially belongs.

"My political position, my goal, is a political realignment," Tanaka, 59, told reporters in her political hometown of Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, her first press conference since announcing earlier this month that she would run in the upcoming general election.