  The existence of etamesic nuclei has been speculated for a long time without
firm experimental evidence. Much of the effort has taken place in final state
interactions on production. One crucial factor in seeing a quasibound state is
its width, which should be related to the imaginary part of the scattering
length. Comparing two models for eta-N scattering giving the same elementary
scattering length, a simple optical potential and an explicit coupling to the
pionic channel, it is seen that the latter yields a much smaller imaginary part
for eta-nucleus scattering. This decrease of absorption may also mean a
possibility for narrow eta-nuclear states.
