Package Download Tool?

[ms419@freezone.co.uk]

Is there a tool to quickly download, for a given architecture, a given 
package & its dependancies?

I've been doing a lot of cross development & find myself downloading 
lots of packages using the Debian web interface. Good as Debian's web 
interface is, this is tedious.

Investigating apt-get, I found: 
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=197424 but I can't 
figure out how to stipulate an architecture to aptitude (-a powerpc, or 
something) or download depended packages.

I need a tool to quickly download (& optionally extract, in one step) 
packages for a stipulated architecture, & there dependancies. Anyone 
know of a solution?

I thought that Debian, with a repository of cross architecture 
binaries, & the oldest package tools, would be great for cross 
development - but thus far, it's been surprisingly difficult!

Thanks!

Jack