HPLIP and libieee

Trying to install hplip 2.8.5 on my Red Hat EL4 box.

I managed to get past the configure stage by installing a host of files (net-snmp-devel, cups-devel, xsane, sane-frontends, sane-backends-devel, dbus-devel). I still had to go with a --disable-fax-build --disable-dbus-build to get the "configure" bit to work.

Getting the following error when I try a make:

/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -I/usr/include/python2.3 -g -O2 -module -avoid-version -o hpmudext.la -rpath /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages hpmudext_la-hpmudext.lo libhpmud.la -lsane -lusb -lcups -lnetsnmp -lcrypto -ldl -ljpeg -lm -lpthread
gcc -shared .libs/hpmudext_la-hpmudext.o -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/home/svenkat/Desktop/hplip-2.8.5/.libs ./.libs/libhpmud.so /usr/lib/libsane.so /usr/lib/libusb.so -lcups /usr/lib/libnetsnmp.so -lcrypto -ldl /usr/lib/libjpeg.so -lm -lpthread -Wl,-soname -Wl,hpmudext.so -o .libs/hpmudext.so
creating hpmudext.la
/bin/sed: can't read /usr/lib/libieee1284.la: No such file or directory
libtool: link: `/usr/lib/libieee1284.la' is not a valid libtool archive
make: *** [hpmudext.la] Error 1

Thoughts please?