  Comparison of the INTEGRAL upper limits on the hard X-ray flux before and
after the low-energy GRB 031203 with the XMM measurements of the dust-scattered
radiation at lower energies suggests that a significant fraction of the total
burst energy could be released in the form of soft X-rays at an early afterglow
stage with a characteristic duration of ~100-1000s. The overall time evolution
of the GRB 031203 afterglow may have not differed qualitatively from the
behavior of standard (i.e., more intense) bursts studied by the SWIFT
observatory. The available data also admit the possibility that the
dust-scattered radiation was associated with an additional soft component in
the spectrum of the gamma-ray burst itself.
