decrufting system files (e.g. GNOME files)

[Rich Johnson <rjohnson@dogstar-interactive.com>]

Hi folks--
  I'm trying to clean out extraneous and old files from the system 
directories.  I have some scripts to short out which files are known to 
the current Debian configuration and which are not.  Many of the "are 
not" files came from earlier versions of currently installed packages. 
For exmample:
  /etc/CORBA/servers/gdict.gnorba
  /etc/CORBA/servers/stripchart-applet.gnorba

were delivered with gnome-utils 1.4.1.2-4 but are not part of my 
currently installed current gnome-utils 2.2.0.3-1.

As a rule, can old such old conffiles be removed without causing too 
much trouble?  I have ~450 of these cluttering /etc.

Thanks
--rich