  We characterize the entanglement contained in a pure three-qubit state via
operational entanglement measures. To this end we derive a new decomposition
for arbitrary 3-qubit states which is characterized by five parameters (up to
local unitary operations). We show that these parameters are uniquely
determined by bipartite entanglement measures. These quantities measure on the
one hand the entanglement required to generate the state and on the other hand
the entanglement contained in the state and have a clear physical meaning.
Moreover, we show that the classification of states obtained in this way is
strongly related to the one obtained when considering general local operations
and classical communication.
