painting a dialog

[Don Mellen <donm tomorrowsoft com>]

I have aan application that on a menu click renders a 
fairly compex dialog box. The application does some heavy network
communication and the communication is slowing the painting of the 
dialog. How can I stop any events until the painting is complete.
I have tried:
        while(gtk_events_pending()) {
                gtk_main_iteration();
        }

But the communication is still slowing the dialogs rendering

Thank you
Don