  By means of analytical and numerical methods, we study how the residual
three-dimensionality affects dynamics of solitons in an attractive
Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a cigar-shaped trap. Based on an effective
1D Gross-Pitaevskii equation that includes an additional quintic self-focusing
term, generated by the tight transverse confinement, we find a family of exact
one-soliton solutions and demonstrate stability of the entire family, despite
the possibility of collapse in the 1D equation with the quintic self-focusing
nonlinearity. Simulating collisions between two solitons in the same setting,
we find a critical velocity, $V_{c}$, below which merger of identical in-phase
solitons is observed. Dependence of $V_{c} $ on the strength of the transverse
confinement and number of atoms in the solitons is predicted by means of the
perturbation theory and investigated in direct simulations. Symmetry breaking
in collisions of identical solitons with a nonzero phase difference is also
shown in simulations and qualitatively explained by means of an analytical
approximation.
