At the stroke of 10 am on Thursday morning, a team of 13 Republican Congressmen, who are termed floor managers, and who constitute the prosecution team said to represent the people of the United States, trooped into the Senate chamber, to set the ball rolling in the first such trial in 130 years.

The group leader, Henry Hyde, a 76-year old Congressman who led the impeachment move against Clinton in the House of Representatives, breathlessly read out the charges against Clinton.

The now-familiar charges, pertained to perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky case, in which Hyde said Clinton "willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial system of the United States".

Having "exhibited" the articles of impeachment before 100 grim-faced Senators, the 13 Congressmen trooped out in a single file,leaving the Senate to complete the rest of the ceremony.

The Senate, which was presided over pro-tempore by the senior-most lawmaker, Strom Thurmond, reconvened a couple of hours later to welcome William Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Thurmond, 96, made a presidential bid in 1948, and the joke goes that he is so senior that his social security number is in single digit).

Rehnquist, a Conservative judge who was first appointed by Richard Nixon and then promoted to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan, is formally designated the trial president. Later in the afternoon, he swore 100 Senators who will act as jurors, to an oath of impartiality.

The floor managers will begin the prosecution case perhaps as early as tomorrow. President Clinton will be defended by a legal team. The initial presentation and argument is expected to take five to seven days.

So much for form and ceremony in this unprecedented and historic case. The fuzzy grey areas is what happens next.

The Republican floormanagers want to call some ten witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky, to make their case. This is being resisted by the Democratic Senators, who feel they have heard it all and seen it all before.Many lawmakers and constitution experts feel that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr has done his job and there is no need to revisit the case.

Besides, they argue, putting Lewinsky on the stand and questioning her will reopen the whole case with all the seamy details. But hard-line Republicans maintain there should be no short cuts and that they will be failing their constitutional duty if they do not go through a full trial.

The last such impeachment trial, of President Andrew Johnson in 1868, lasted 10 weeks, complete with witnesses and cross-examination. The prosecution team wants a similar courtroom like trial even if the majority public sentiment, as seen in various opinion polls, is against it. This battle for a full press court vs abbreviated trial is being fought on the sidelines, and from all accounts,the Republicans are winning the argument even if they look set to lose the trial battle.

But many right-wingers are hoping that a prolonged trial will bring out more scandals about the President, or at least disgust the public so much that the polls will turn against him and they will want him to quit.

The White House, meanwhile, has indicated that if the prosecution team insists on calling witnesses and going through the whole rigmarole, then it will also seek more time to work on its defence.

Many pundits feel this could turn out to be another long and dirty year.