Judge Orders Freeze in Legal Fight
BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 10, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - A tense - and temporary - cease-fire in the legal battle between Congress, the U.N. investigative team headed by Paul Volcker, and the top investigator who recently resigned from the team, Robert Parton, was reached yesterday, according to all involved.
After the United Nations filed an injunction in a Washington federal court to stop Mr. Parton from testifying in Congress, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered a 10-day freeze on all legal action. Despite the court-ordered freeze, confrontational spirits reign.
Along with his former deputy on the committee, Miranda Duncan, Mr. Parton resigned from the team known as the Independent Inquiry Committee last month after accusing its leadership of being too soft on Secretary-General Annan. He has since been subpoenaed by several congressional committees.
The 10-day freeze gives Congressional Committees, the U.N., and Mr. Parton time to reach a reasonable agreement on how to proceed, Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, said in a statement. But Mr. Shays, who heads the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, which subpoenaed Mr. Parton last week, said that the battle is far from over. I continue to believe that Congress can get the information we need while maintaining the integrity of the Volcker investigation.
The Volcker committee argues that its investigation would be compromised if Mr. Parton testifies before Congress. Yesterday's court action was meant simply to prevent the guy from pushing out stolen information that could compromise people's lives and certainly the integrity of the investigation, a spokesman for the IIC, Mike Holtzman, told The New York Sun.
Mr. Parton's attorney, Lanny Davis, reacted angrily. No sooner than leaving the courtroom after hearing the IIC say it wanted to work out a reasonable accommodation with Congress did we learn that the IIC spokesman maliciously lied about Mr. Parton, he said. Mr. Volcker should ask Mr. Holtzman to spend more time investigating and less time on smearing.
The action and the freeze yesterday do not apply to material already passed on by Mr. Parton to the House Committee on International Relations, headed by Rep. Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois. Mr. Parton insisted in a statement yesterday that he had kept the records so he could be in a position to defend myself against risks that I knew existed as a result of the IIC Committee's actions.