'en_US.UTF-8' locale missing

[Rajasekaran Deepak <deepakr@students.iiit.ac.in>]

If "export LC_ALL='en_US.UTF-8'" is done in .bashrc,
programs give errors like:
    locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
    locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
    locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

How do I solve this problem?

If "export LC_ALL='POSIX'" is done, then there are no errors.

'ls -d /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US*' gives only
'/usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US'.

'ls -d /usr/share/locale/en_US*' gives only
'/usr/share/locale/en_US'.

Background: I am using Debian Sarge. I am new to Debian. I have been using
Red Hat till recently.

Mail-Followup-To: deepakr@students.iiit.ac.in, debian-user@lists.debian.org

Thanks in advance.
-- 
Rajasekaran Deepak <http://students.iiit.ac.in/~deepakr/>