This is a (somewhat) known problem with RH8+; to fix it, set your LANG environment variable from X.UTF-8 to X before compiling (where X is dependend on your settings), ie, when $ENV{LANG} eq "en_US.UTF-8":

export LANG=en_US
perl Makefile.PL
...
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This switches off the default use of unicode, and will probably solve your problems.

For a more permanent solution change /etc/sysconfig/i18n to:

LANG="en_US"
SUPPORTED="en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en"
SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"
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Or whatever language you use.

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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