unrecognised emulation mode: elf_x86_64

Hello.

I am running into a problem with Perl on our 64 bit architecture.  The
system's CPUs are AMD Opterons, the OS is RHEL3-U3, and Perl 5.8.0 is
installed from the bundled RedHat RPM.  Attempts to install
Bundle::CPAN from the cpan shell is resulting in ld errors when the
system tries to compile Data::Dumper and Term:ReadKey.  The error is:

/usr/bin/ld: unrecognised emulation mode: elf_x86_64
Supported emulations: elf_i386 i386linux
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

I get the same error if I attempt to compile Perl 5.8.6 from source. 
Any help or shove in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

Also--side note--I tried searching the archives for this list, but
there was an HTDIG error on
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/.  The error was:
"Unable to read document database file Did you run htmerge?"

-- 
OliveAddict