Maurice Strong, the United Nations' Korea envoy and an adviser to secretary-general Kofi Annan, on Wednesday said he would step aside until questions were answered over his relationship with a South Korean allegedly hired by Baghdad to lobby UN officials over Iraq's oil-for-food programme.

Last week, US federal prosecutors said Iraq had used Tongsun Park, the South Korean, to influence negotiations over the design of the oil-for-food programme in the early and mid-1990s.