UNITED NATIONS — The UN is studying whether it was appropriate for its envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the oil-for-food scandal, officials said Tuesday.

Secretary General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Canadian businessman 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.

Strong is the UN pointman on stalled 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,'' Annan told reporters Tuesday. Annan noted that Strong was not a full-time staff member, but did not elaborate.

UN officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said senior UN staff have recommended that Strong be suspended.

Strong denies any involvement with the $64 billion US humanitarian program in Iraq and has pledged to co-operate with an oil-for-food investigation led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. Volcker's committee is investigating whether Strong had any ties to the program.

But his admitted ties with Park are raising questions about a possible conflict of interest with his UN role. Strong acknowledged Monday that Park invested in an energy company he was associated with in 1997.

Stephane Dujarric, a UN spokesman, said the world body was studying whether it was appropriate for Strong to have ties with Park given that Strong, a well-known businessman with longtime association with the UN, was an envoy to the region.

"It's a decision by the UN administration to decide whether or not that is appropriate,'' Dujarric said.

Park was known to have been close to former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, according to UN staff.

"He was a friend -- I assume still is a friend -- of former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali,'' said Joseph Verner Reed, an adviser to Annan and former special representative for public affairs.

Reed echoed comments by Gillian Sorensen, the former UN assistant secretary general for external relations, who told The Associated Press on Monday that she recalled at least two occasions when Park met Boutros-Ghali.

Park was thrust back into the spotlight Thursday, when the U.S. Attorney's Office accused him of accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while he allegedly operated in the United States as an unregistered agent for Baghdad, lobbying for oil-for-food.

Committee spokesmen would not comment on whether they had already interviewed Strong in connection with oil-for-food, but in a statement said his "readiness to co-operate'' was welcomed.

The oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was created to help Iraqis cope with UN 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 UN officials vouchers for oil to be resold at a profit.

The criminal complaint could be damaging to the UN because it mentions that Park had met several times with two unidentified UN officials in apparent efforts to gain their support on oil-for-food.

According to a government witness, Park claimed that he had used a $5 million guarantee from the Iraqi government to fund business dealings with "UN Official 2,'' court papers said.

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 "UN Official 2,'' though the company failed and the money was lost.

The U.S. complaint calls for the arrest of Park, who was reported to be hiding in Tokyo and considering a U.S. plea bargain offer, according to South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo daily.