[exim] Building Exim 4.43 on Red Hat Linux

Im attempting to build Exim v4.43 on Redhat Linux 2.4.21-15. The build process is configured to use Gcc 2.96 for compilation.

However, the build process terminates early and I get what appear to be several linker errors. It looks to be an issue with the configuration of the gcc compiler. Has anyone seen similar errors appearing before or know what might cause these errors?

make[1]: Entering directory `/export/home/mckinlr/exim-4.43/build-Linux-i386'
cc -O -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -o buildconfig buildconfig.c -
lnsl -lcrypt
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x229): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `__ctype_b'
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x259): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `__ctype_b'
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x3ac): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `__ctype_b'
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x3f4): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `__ctype_b'
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x4f0): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `__ctype_b'
/tmp/ccKkTWUT.o(.text+0x538): more undefined references to `__ctype_b' follow
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [buildconfig] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/export/home/mckinlr/exim-4.43/build-Linux-i386'
make: *** [go] Error 2

Thanks in advance,
Richard