U.S. Vice President Joe Biden says he believes there is enough support in the Senate to ratify the new START nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
The vice president spoke Sunday on U.S. television, as senators held last-minute sessions to vote on key issues before new members of Congress take seats in January.
The new START treaty, signed by the U.S. and Russian presidents in April, is one of the items on their agenda. It would require both countries to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads and bombers.
Biden also asserted that there are terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan who are planning to attack the United States. He said they do not have the capacity for a September 11, 2001-sized event, but are planning "smaller but deadly" attacks.
He also said the message U.S. politicians got from the November mid-term elections was that the American people want compromise. Democrats gave up a number of congressional seats to Republicans in that election.
And he called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a "high-tech terrorist," referring to the release of thousands of classified U.S. documents on the WikiLeaks website.