  Non stationary cylindrically symmetric exact solutions of the
Einstein-Maxwell equations are derived as single soliton perturbations of a
Levi-Civita metric, by an application of Alekseev inverse scattering method. We
show that the metric derived by L. Witten, interpreted as describing the
electrogravitational field of a straight, stationary, conducting wire may be
recovered in the limit of a `wide' soliton. This leads to the possibility of
interpreting the solitonic solutions as representing a non stationary
electrogravitational field exterior to, and interacting with, a thin, straight,
superconducting cosmic string. We give a detailed discussion of the
restrictions that arise when appropiate energy and regularity conditions are
imposed on the matter and fields comprising the string, considered as `source',
the most important being that this `source' must necessarily have a non-
vanishing minimum radius. We show that as a consequence, it is not possible,
except in the stationary case, to assign uniquely a current to the source from
a knowledge of the electrogravitational fields outside the source. A discussion
of the asymptotic properties of the metrics, the physical meaning of their
curvature singularities, as well as that of some of the metric parameters, is
also included.
