Passing all extra commandline arguments to python program, Optparse raises exception

[sapsi]

Hello,
Im using optparse and python 2.6 to parse some options, my commandline
looks like

prog [options] start|stop extra-args-i-will-pas-on

The options are --b --c --d

The extra options are varied are are passed onto another program e.g --
quiet --no-command , my program doesnt care what these are but instead
passes them onto another program.

I know these will always follow start|stop.

However optparse tries to process them and throws an exception - how
can i prevent this without placing all the extra-args in quotes.

Thank you
Saptarshi