US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday praised the "political courage and personal courage" of Mongolia and its troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On a brief stop in Ulan Bator, the third leg of a trip that also covered China and South Korea, Rumsfeld was feted by guards in ancient costume, treated to a throat-singing performance and presented with a wild horse as a gift from Defence Minister Tserenkhuu Sharavdorj.
"Your country has stepped up and joined a global coalition of countries in the war on terror," he told a gathering of 180 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in the Mongolian capital.
"You have contributed to significant improvement in the lives of the citizens of those two countries," Rumsfeld said.
A country of 2.7 million people sandwiched between Russia and China, Mongolia has 131 soldiers in Iraq conducting security and medical work and about 15 troops in Afghanistan training local forces.
In February 2004, two Mongolian security troops guarding a Polish base in Hilla in south-central Iraq spotted a suspicious vehicle driving towards the camp and shot the driver dead, stopping what turned out to be a would-be suicide bomber.
Rumsfeld told the pair, Azziya and Sambuu-Yondon, that "to put your lives at risk on behalf of your fellow soldiers is admirable".
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