  We analyse the ROSAT PSPC spectrum of 19 X-ray selected Narrow Emission Line
Galaxies (NELGs) discovered during the optical identification of sources in the
ROSAT UK Deep Survey. Their properties are compared to those of broad line
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the same sample. Counts in three spectral bands
have been extracted for all the sources, and have been fitted with a power-law
model assuming the Galactic value for NH. The average slope of NELGs is
\alpha=0.45+-0.09, whilst for the AGN it is \alpha=0.96+-0.03. The power-law
model is a good fit for ~90% of NELGs and ~75% of AGN. Recent work shows that
the fractional surface density of NELGs increases with respect to AGN at faint
fluxes. Thus they are expected to be an important component of the residual
soft (<2 keV) X--ray background. The slope of the X--ray background
(\alpha~0.4, 1-10 keV) is harder than that of AGN (\alpha~1) but our results
show that it is consistent with the summed spectrum of the NELGs in the deep
survey (\alpha~0.4). This may finally reconcile the spectrum of the background
with the properties of the sources that constitute it.
