Jar files in global classpath

Hello,

one question: I had the following jde-global-classpath: 

("~/da/pausch/classes" "~/da/pausch/lib/colt.jar")

jde-compile-option-classpath is nil.
jde-expand-classpath-p is at its standard setting (t)
jde-lib-directory-names is at its standard setting

When I tried to compile the project, it didn't find any of the classes defined 
in colt.jar.  Eventually, I simply unzipped it and put the resulting 
directories into the classes-directory. And it worked!

I also tried the version with simply giving ~/da/pausch/lib instead 
of .../lib/colt.jar, but there was no difference.

Question: Should the above setup work? How should I include jar files into the 
classpath?

Wolfgang