Maurice Strong Resigns (Steps Aside?) as Special Rapporteur to N. Korea!

Thanks to an anonymous source for referring this:

Canadian Maurice Strong, an influential entrepreneur, withdrew as U.N. envoy for Korea on Wednesday while investigators probed his ties to a lobbyist suspected of bribing U.N. officials with Iraqi funds. Strong, who has served in a variety of U.N. posts since 1947, was a part-time adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.” He is suspending himself with the secretary-general’s approval,” Mark Malloch Brown, Annan’s chief of staff, said in an interview with two journalists. “Given the controversy, I think he’s doing absolutely the right thing,” he said.

But some diplomats said that Strong acted only after senior U.N. officials suggested he resign. Annan also is considering a policy that would force part-time employees like Strong to disclose their finance to avoid conflicts of interest, Malloch Brown said. Currently only full-time staff have to do so.

Known worldwide for his work on the environment, Strong, 76, acknowledged this week he had business dealings in 1997 “on a normal commercial basis” with the lobbyist, Tongsun Park, a South Korean born in North Korea. But he denied having any involvement in the oil-for-food program, which is being investigated by federal prosecutors and by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who was appointed by Annan to probe wrongdoings.
. . . .
Despite the Washington scandal, Park was known to visit former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at U.N. headquarters in about 1993, said Gillian Sorensen, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general. But “I know nothing more,” she told Reuters.

Strong, who had worked at the United Nations as an adviser for reform in 1997, said that Park had proved extremely helpful in dealings with North Korea. The criminal complaint said Park accepted millions of dollars from Iraq. An informant told U.S. authorities some of the money was funneled to two high-ranking U.N. officials, one in 1993, the second one in 1997 or 1998.