Kinetic equilibration in heavy ion collisions: the role of elastic processes

We discuss the question of thermalization during the very early stages of a high energy heavy ion collision. We review a recent study where we explicitely showed that, contrarily to a widely used assumption, elastic collisions between the produced partons are not sufficient to rapidly drive the system toward local kinetic equilibrium. We then briefly discuss recent developments concerning the description of kinetic equilibration and comment on some open issues related to phenomenology.