Reid says live witnesses would drag out impeachment for months

"I hope we don't have to call live witnesses," said Reid, the new assistant Democratic leader.

"We already have from the House 60,000 pages of testimony and evidence. It would seem from that, the House could make a pretty good case ... then the president could respond and use that same information," he said.

It is unlikely that Clinton will be removed from office, Reid said.

"And Republicans will say that now," he told KOLO-TV.

"But having said that, that does not mean the president of the United States himself doesn't deserve punishment. It's a question of what the punishment should be."

Reid said it would take "a real convincing case" for him to agree that Monica Lewinsky and other witnesses should be brought before the senators acting as jurors in the case.

"I'm not totally opposed to them. But I'm saying, we have to be real careful. Because once we start live witnesses, this thing will go on, not for weeks, it will go on for months," he said.

"We have so much to do, we can't spend months doing this."

Reid, the minority whip just re-elected to a third term, said he was in meetings for nearly seven hours on Thursday "trying to work things out procedurally" and meeting in a bipartisan caucus with all 100 senators today.

"We don't know how we are going to handle this even right now as we speak," he told the TV station Thursday night.

The Senate still hasn't decided how the House Republicans will make their presentation, how the White House will respond, how senators will ask questions "then what we are going to vote on," Reid said.

"We need to make sure we have an expedited procedure that is bipartisan in nature," he said.

"I think people of good will in both parties want to work something out."

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