  We consider elastic quark-quark scattering at high energy with fixed momentum
transfer $t$ and perform factorization of soft-gluon exchanges into a vacuum
expectation value of Wilson lines. Taking into account nonperturbative
corrections whose structure is predicted from infrared renormalon analysis, we
represent the scattering amplitude as an asymptotic series. In the region of
small momentum transfer, where the nonperturbative corrections are dominant,
the scattering amplitude is Gaussian distribution in $t$ with a slope depending
on a nonperturbative scale. A nonperturbative origin of the soft pomeron is
thus identified.
