menuconfig won't start

[Philipp Schulte <philipp.schulte@arcormail.de>]

Hello,
I just wanted to get a new kernel for my Debian-Potato. I downloaded
2.2.16 and wanted to configure it but menuconfig aborts with this
message:

nepomuk:/usr/src/linux# make menuconfig
rm -f include/asm
( cd include ; ln -sf asm-i386 asm)
make -C scripts/lxdialog all
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux/scripts/lxdialog'
gcc -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -DLOCALE
-DCURSES_LOC="<curses.h>"   -c -o lxdialog.o lxdialog.c
In file included from lxdialog.c:22:
dialog.h:29: curses.h: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [lxdialog.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux/scripts/lxdialog'
make: *** [menuconfig] Error 2
nepomuk:/usr/src/linux#

It seems like "curses.h" is misssing. Does anyone know why this
happens and how it can be solved?
Thanks a lot,
Phil