Internal Error, Could not early remove perl-base

[Ryan <rgrant@sifu.com>]

hi, i'm upgrading a few things in an old (unstable) potato distribution.
at the moment, i'm pointing to the currently-unstable packages.
perl is giving me trouble, in such a way that apt bombs out.

here's the bug:

rgrant:/usr/doc# apt-get -o apt::forceloopbreak=true -q dselect-upgrade
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  2utf apache dialog gmp2 liblockdev0-perl libmd5-perl libpam0g-dbg* libpam0g-dev* libpam0g-util
  libpgsql libpgtcl locales menu modconf perl postgresql-dev pppconfig w3mir whiptail www-pgsql
  www-search 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  apache-common apache-perl apt-show-source debconf freetype2 ifupdown ipchains ipmasqadm libbz2-1.0
  libconvert-ber-perl libdb2-util libdevel-symdump-perl libdigest-md5-perl libgd1 libgmp2
  libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libjpeg62 libldap2 libmon-perl libnewt0 libnss-db
  libpam-modules libpam-runtime libpcre3 libpgsql2 libpopt0 libsasl-modules libsasl7
  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 libterm-slang-perl libterm-stool-perl liburi-perl libwrap0 net-tools
  netkit-inetd netkit-ping netkit-rpc perl-5.005 perl-5.005-base perl-5.005-doc portmap qmtpssh rc
  rcs slang1 ssh-nonfree tcpd traceroute 
The following held packages will be changed:
  libnewt0 libpopt0 
60 packages upgraded, 49 newly installed, 21 to remove and 453 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/28.6MB of archives. After unpacking 6977kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
E: This installation run will require temporarily removing the essential package perl-base due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. This is often bad, but if you really want to do it, activate the APT::Force-LoopBreak option.
E: Internal Error, Could not early remove perl-base
rgrant:/usr/doc#

perl-base is 5.004.04-6
apt is 0.3.19
perl-5.005-base is  5.005.03-7.1

i can provide any other info necessary.

thanks for any help or workarounds,
- Ryan