Republican senators yesterday rejected a Democratic compromise plan which would have ended the impeachment trial of President Clinton by the end of this week without hearing witnesses. The plan broke down over the crucial issue of calling witnesses, including Ms Monica Lewinsky.
The White House spokesman, Mr Joe Lockhart, criticised the Republicans for rejecting a plan "that on a bipartisan basis could bring this case to a conclusion in an expedited way". The confusion behind the scenes forced several delays in the resumption of the trial in the Senate.
The Senate later began hearing arguments on the motion by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd to dismiss the trial. The prosecutors or managers from the House of Representatives and the White House legal team were given one hour each.
The vote on the motion will not come until today, or even tomorrow, if each of the 100 senators claims 10 minutes speaking time. Normally the debate by the senators would be closed, but Democratic Senator Tom Harkin has put down a motion to open the debates to the public.
The Republican Senate leader, Trent Lott, said yesterday that "We have the votes, I believe, not to dismiss at this point. I think that is a short-circuiting of the process that would not be fair. The American people would not agree with that."
The Democrats' plan would have eliminated the two votes set for this week on dismissal and on calling witnesses. Instead, the Republican prosecutors would have been given time to rebut the White House defence of President Clinton. Then, after two days of debate in private, the 100 senators would have voted on Friday on the two articles of impeachment charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice.
A two-thirds majority of the 100 senators would be needed to convict the President on one or both of the articles. It is widely accepted that this will be impossible because the Republicans are 12 votes short of the required 67.
The witness question has continued to bedevil the concluding stages of the impeachment trial. The Democrats, following the White House lead, have been strongly opposed to calling witnesses.
But the Republican prosecutors have been insisting that some witnesses are needed to resolve conflicts in the testimony of Mr Clinton, Ms Lewinsky and others such as the President's secretary, Ms Betty Currie.
There have been increasing signs that some Republican senators are ready to side with Democrats to vote against calling witnesses. Just six Republicans switching sides could ensure that the trial could end fairly quickly without witnesses.
Republican Senator Gordon Smith said yesterday that the vote on having witnesses would "probably fail" because a number of Republicans were opposed and would vote with the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Mr Dick Morris, a former political adviser and pollster for President Clinton, has told the prosecution team that President Clinton felt victimised when the Monica Lewinsky affair broke a year ago. Mr Clinton was convinced he was telling the truth when he denied having sex with Ms Lewinsky, according to Mr Morris, who was being questioned in private as a potential witness.
Mr Morris who was asked about his conversations with the President at the time, told the investigators that Mr Clinton's voice "carried the conviction and the sense of victimisation of somebody who honestly believed he was telling the truth."
"His mental state at that point was `I'm really incredibly virtuous . . . all I had was oral sex'," Mr Morris said in an interview with Reuters.
Mr Morris said this assertion about Mr Clinton's state of mind had helped the President's case. "I characterised it as delusional, but you can't be both delusional and perjurous," he said.