SYSTEMATICS OF SOFT FINAL-STATE INTERACTIONS IN B-DECAYS

By using very general and well established features of soft strong int eractions we show, contrary to conventional expectations, that (i) sof t final-state interactions (FSI) do not disappear for large m(B), (ii) inelastic rescattering is expected to be the main source of soft FSI phases, and (iii) FSI which interchange charge and/or flavors are supp ressed by a power of m(B), but are quite likely to be significant at m (B) similar or equal to 5 GeV. We briefly discuss the influence of the se interactions on tests of CP violation and on theoretical calculatio ns of weak decays.