US lists some silent partners in coalition

While US and British troops are on the front line against Iraq, other members of the US-led coalition are quietly at work, from a Danish submarine to special Polish, Czech and Slovak forces.

While US and British troops are on the front line against Iraq, other members of the US-led coalition are quietly at work, from a Danish submarine to special Polish, Czech and Slovak forces, the US national security adviser wrote in a French newspaper.

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"The most serious threat of our time" is what binds the coalition, Condoleezza Rice wrote in the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, naming the combination of arms of mass destruction, terrorism and "regimes outside the law." The piece was made available on Saturday night.

The nearly 50 countries in what US President George W. Bush has called the "coalition of the willing" contribute in a variety of ways, with personnel, services or material, and are "showing the way," Rice wrote in an apparent effort to give a face to what has appeared to be a coalition made up mainly of the United States and Britain.

The Australian Navy is clearing mines at the crucial port of Umm Qsar, special Polish forces are holding an Iraqi oil platform in the Gulf, while a Danish submarine surveys Iraqi intelligence services, according to the account by Rice, published in French.

She provided no details on any of the operations, but said the role of these other coalition members would grow as the war proceeds, and as reconstruction begins.

Among other contributions she noted was the presence in Kuwait of special Czech and Slovak forces, prepared for a riposte to any chemical or biological weapons attack.