Weird fonts problem in X

[Nebu John Mathai <mathai@ecf.utoronto.ca>]

I just reinstalled my debian 2 system and now I'm finding that I get error
messages whenever I start netscape or gimp or xview-textedit etc.
Here's what Netscape says:
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-*-helvetica-medium-o-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct

Gimp says:
** WARNING **: file gdkfont.c: line 115 (gdk_font_ref): "font != NULL"

** WARNING **: file gdkfont.c: line 177 (gdk_font_equal): "fonta != NULL"

** WARNING **: file gdkfont.c: line 115 (gdk_font_ref): "font != NULL"
gimp fatal error: sigsegv caught
[n]othing, [e]xit, [s]tack trace, [a]ttach to process: 

Is there anything obvious that I've done wrong?

Please cc: a copy to me at, mathai@ecf.toronto.edu, as  had to temporarily
unsub from the list.

Thanks for your help!