Problems with Gnome Terminal

[Victor Munoz <vmunoz macul ciencias uchile cl>]

 Hello. I have a debian potato distribution, and had Gnome installed for
about a year without particular problems. Some weeks ago I installed
Ximian, and I've had problems  with Gnome Terminal (I have version 1.4.0.6).
   I've noticed I can't comfortably use emacs in the console
version (i.e. emacs -nw), because some key bindings don't
work. I first noticed it working on a remote machine (where I always call 
emacs -nw), but then I realized
the problem persisted too if I invoked emacs -nw at my machine. 
M-Backspace to delete a word backwards, for instance, which always
worked, does something else. Using the describe-key command, I learned
that it is now understood like ESC C-h (mark-defun). However, if I use
M-Backspace at the command line on that remote machine, or mine, it does
what it should. There must be some misunderstanding between emacs -nw and
the gnome terminal. 
  And going back to the extended ASCII problem, if I open the Gnome
Character Map, only half the characters are shown, although all 191
cells appear. If I put the mouse over
the "character code 225", I see an accented "a" at the bottom line, and if
I click on it it appears in the "Text to copy" field, but I never see
these characters in the black box at the left. 

 Does anybody have any idea as to how to solve these problems?

 Thanks in advance,

					Victor Munoz