I can't add trash / wastebasket icon to panel - any suggestions for workaround?

["j t" <mark473 gmail com>]

Hi all.

I'm working on a freshly installed debian lenny box with gnome 2.22,
and whenever I try to add a wastebasket / trash icon to the panel,
nothing appears (I think there's a 1-pixel wide transparent image
added, but I'm not completely sure).

I've already seen the following bug reports:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=485808
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-applets/+bug/211604
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/195915
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/49594

and I've tried all the proposed workarounds / solutions (including
editing /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_Panel_TrashApplet.server), but
nothing works for me. I've also tried manually starting
/usr/lib/gnome-applets/trashapplet (after a "killall trashapplet") and
the process doesn't start (after about 2 minutes, the command prompt
reappears and "ps" shows that it there is nothing called trashapplet
running).

Is there anyone out there who understands enough about how
gnome-applets work who might be able to start me in the right
direction to debug this / find a workaround?

Thanks, Jaime