using apt to update component of perl?

Hello,

I maintain an apt-rpm repository at my place of work.  The repository is
for our production and development machines which all (currently) run
Redhat 9.  We do a lot of perl development and we need to be able to
upgrade packages that the perl RPM provides, but we don't want to have
to uninstall or build our own perl rpm.  

As an example, one of the perl modules we wish to install is
perl-MIME-Base64.  The current perl RPM on RH9 (perl-5.8.0-88) provides
'perl(MIME::Base64) = 2.12'.  I have built RPMs of perl-MIME-Base64
(using a newer MIME::Base64) without any provides (using AutoReqProv:
no), with the default provides generated by the redhat internal
dependency generator, and with explicit Provides: lines in the spec
file.  I can always install this RPM using just RPM (rpm -Uvh
perl-MIME-Base64-xxxx).  However, whenever I want to install this RPM
using the apt repository, regardless of whether it has any dependencies
or provides, apt always wants to uninstall perl before install my
perl-MIME-Base64 RPM.   

Is there any way I can get Apt to install my perl-MIME-Base64 RPM (and
other RPMs that upgrade a portion of the perl RPM) without having it try
and uninstall perl at the same time?

Again, this is on Redhat 9 with apt 0.5.5cnc6 (the most recent RPM for
apt I could find for RH9 was this version).  

Thank you for any help.
-- 
seth / @sethdaniel.org