  We discuss the role of elastic and inelastic collisions and their interplay
in the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma. We consider a simplified
situation of a static plasma, spatially uniform and isotropic in momentum
space. We focus on the small momentum region, which equilibrates first, and on
a short time scale. We obtain a simple kinetic equation that allows for an
analytic description of the most important regimes. The present analysis
suggests that the formation of a Bose condensate, expected when only elastic
collisions are present, is strongly hindered by the inelastic, radiative,
processes.
