In a statement issued late on Wednesday, the agency said its Coordinating Committee of 83 countries will decide in May which of the 15 to recommend to the annual WIPO General Assembly, which meets in Geneva in September.

"Whoever gets the job, there's going to be a lot of political battling between developed and developing countries, given the bitterness over Idris's problems," said one Geneva envoy who asked not to be identified.

Idris, who has headed WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, since 1997, is leaving a year before his second six-year term runs out following a furore over whether he misreported his real age when he first joined the body.

The row -- in which the United States and European countries lined up against African and Muslim nations who supported Idris and argued he had done nothing wrong -- led to its 2008-09 budget being blocked at last year's Assembly.

Among the 15 candidates who emerged from a three-month process that ended on Wednesday are several who work for WIPO, which plays a major role in managing global trademark and patents pacts, and several senior diplomats.

The WIPO insiders include Australia's Francis Gurry, former general counsel and deputy director-general in charge of patents and architect of its Internet dispute system, and deputy director-general for general affairs, Philippe Petit of France.

Outsiders include Jorge Amigo, director of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Masood Khan, and Enrique Manlo of the Philippines, a former chair of the WIPO General Assembly.

The other countries to put up candidates are Poland, Bangladesh, Brazil, Macedonia, Italy, Kenya, Slovenia, Russia -- which proposed its intellectual property service chief Boris Simonov -- Japan and Honduras.