Hi, I think I figured out the problem. The culprit seems to be in the file /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50prcs.el in the highlighted line
(if (string-match "^19." emacs-version) <<=== (setq load-path (nconc load-path (list (concat "/usr/share/" (symbol-name debian-emacs-flavor) "/site-lisp/prcs"))))) I commented this check out, and xemacs works fine. I don't know whether this is kosher though. Some helpful doc on how emacs starts up in debian is in the file /usr/doc/emacsen-common/debian-emacs-policy.gz Thanks for your help and interest! Hope this is useful! --prashanth