  Transverse expansion of centrally produced matter in Pb on Pb collisions at
beam energies around 158 AGeV appears to be rather `soft'. Two possible reasons
-- an extended preequilibrium stage and a first order phase transition from a
quark-gluon-plasma into hadronic matter -- are discussed. The softening of
transverse expansion caused by preequilibrium dynamics is estimated with the
aid of the transport model RQMD which does not contain a first order phase
transition. It is found that the anisotropy of transverse flow in non-central
reactions is very different in the preequilibrium and hydrodynamic scenarios
even if the latter are based on a strong 1st order transition.

Nuclear Theory