Aqua regia

I was flipping through my chemistry book a couple of days ago and was
looking at a problem about the dissolving of gold.

It supplied this equation:

Au(s) + 3NO3-(aq) + 6H+(aq) --> (<-->?) Au3+(aq) + 3NO2(g) + 3H20(l)

When I look at this equation, all it uses is the Nitric acid. Yet, gold
doesn't react with nitric acid alone. Is the Cl- a catalyst? I looked
on the internet (though I admit not much because I can only really get
to google, none of the other pages) and I couldn't find an explanation
for this phenomenon.

.

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