cant use AA fonts in menus and desktop

hi, i cant set an AA font in the menus or desktop. THey will work great
in apps liks abiword or xterm, but not in the apps menus or desktop.

By defaults, they are kinda awful (like 'arioso' show up kind awful)
If i set export GDK_USE_XFT=1 in my init, (like .bash_profile), they
wont show up at all, meaning i have menus with no text at all in it,
even older fonts.

here are my config : 

.bash_profile 

....
#Gnome AA fonts
export GDK_USE_XFT=1 

TZ='Europe/Paris'; export TZ

...




/etc/fonts/fonts.conf

...
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/drakfont</dir>
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF</dir>
    <dir>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1</dir>

    <dir>/usr/share/fonts/</dir>

    <dir>/usr/share/texmf/fonts/</dir>
    <dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
    <dir>~/.fonts</dir>

....




/etc/X11/XftConfig

dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"

# Red Hat additions
dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/ja/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/ko/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/zh_CN/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/zh_TW/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/texmf/fonts/"

match edit antialias=true;
#
# alias 'fixed' for 'mono'
#
match any family == "fixed"             edit family =+ "mono";

.....


.xftconfig

#
# Directories containing fonts to anti-alias
#
dir "/home/alex/.kde/share/fonts/TrueType"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/"
dir "/usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType/"

#
# Configuration patterns
#
match any family == "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" edit spacing = mono;


Hope you can help me

Thanks 

Alex