Starting Emacs: "Loading 40mule-ucs (source)..." takes a while.

["Adam" <a24061@yahoo.com>]

I installed Debian "stable" and subsequently revised to "testing". 
With both versions I've had the following problem with Emacs 
(currently 21.2.1): whenever I run it, it takes a very long time 
to get through the message ``Loading 40mule-ucs (source)...''.

I've never had this problem on Emacs on other Linux distros or 
OpenBSD, although I use mule. Why does this slow loading occur 
specifically in Debian, and how can I fix it?

Thanks,
Adam