Gnome won't start with firewall on

Hi,

I'm running Redhat 9 with linux kernel 2.6.2.
Gnome will not fully start unless I stop the firewall
briefly and restart it after gnome is started.

In a similar and related problem, I can't get the control-panel to display
until I stop the firewall either.

Does anyone know a fix other them stopping my firewall?

Thanks for your help.

-- tony
"Surrender to the Void." -- John Lennon