[Zope] zope start errors

Greetings all: Sorry for this newbie question but zope fails to start reporting the local is not supported. Looking at z2.py L is set too '' which means it should default to the system default, and locale is installed in python as a module. The reason I am asking for info is that this system is a fresh 7.3 SuSE install including python and zope rpm from SuSE. In the past when installing zope and python from source I have not seen this error befor. Has any other SuSE user see this error form a stock system. Best Chris H.