U.N. To Review Envoy's Ties To Businessman
BY NICK WADHAMS - Associated Press
April 20, 2005

UNITED NATIONS -The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said yesterday.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress.
Mr. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.
The allegations have just come out, and he has no plans to go to the region tomorrow, Mr. Annan told reporters yesterday. Mr. Annan noted that Mr. Strong was not a full-time staff member, but did not elaborate.
U.N. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said senior U.N. staff have recommended that Mr. Strong be suspended.
Mr. Strong denies any involvement with the $64 billion humanitarian program in Iraq and has pledged to cooperate with an oil-for-food probe led by a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker. Mr. Volcker's committee is investigating whether Mr. Strong had any ties to the program.
But his admitted ties with Mr. Park are raising questions about a possible conflict of interest with his U.N. role. Mr. Strong acknowledged on Monday that Mr. Park invested in an energy company he was associated with in 1997.
A U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said the United Nations was studying whether it was appropriate for Mr. Strong to have ties with Mr. Park given that Mr. Strong, a well-known Canadian businessman with longtime association with the United Nations, was an envoy to the region.
It's a decision by the U.N. administration to decide whether or not that is appropriate, Mr. Dujarric said.
Mr. Park was known to have been close to the former U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, according to U.N. staff.
He was a friend - I assume still is a friend - of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said an adviser to Mr. Annan and former special representative for public affairs, Joseph Verner Reed.
Mr. Reed echoed comments by a former U.N. assistant secretary-general for external relations, Gillian Sorensen, who told the Associated Press on Monday that she recalled at least two occasions when Mr. Park met Mr. Boutros-Ghali.
Mr. Park was thrust back into the spotlight on Thursday, when the U.S. Attorney's Office accused him of accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while he allegedly operated in America as an unregistered agent for Baghdad, lobbying for oil for food.
Committee spokesmen would not comment on whether they had already interviewed Mr. Strong in connection with oil for food, but in a statement said his readiness to cooperate was welcomed.
The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was created to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It let the Iraqi government sell limited - and eventually unlimited - amounts of oil primarily to buy humanitarian goods.
But Saddam chose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods. In a bid to end the sanctions, Saddam allegedly gave former government officials, activists, journalists, and U.N. officials vouchers for oil to be resold at a profit.
The criminal complaint could be damaging to the United Nations because it mentions that Mr. Park had met several times with two unidentified U.N. officials in apparent efforts to gain their support on oil for food.
According to a government witness, Mr. Park claimed that he had used a $5 million guarantee from the Iraqi government to fund business dealings with U.N. Official 2, court papers said.
Mr. Park also allegedly told the government witness in 1997 or 1998 that he had invested about $1 million that he received from Iraq in a Canadian company established by the son of U.N. Official 2, though the company failed and the money was lost.
The complaint calls for the arrest of Mr. Park, who was reported to be hiding in Tokyo and considering a plea bargain offer, according to South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo daily.