  We suggest that for singular rotationally invariant closed string backgrounds
which need sources for their support at the origin (in particular, for special
plane waves and fundamental strings) certain `trivial' \a'-corrections (which
are usually ignored since in the absence of sources they can be eliminated by a
field redefinition) may play an important role eliminating the singularities in
the exact solutions. These corrections effectively regularize the source
delta-function at the \a'-scale. We demonstrate that similar smearing of the
singularity of the leading-order point-source solution indeed takes place in
the open string theory.

High Energy Physics - Theory