Well this is how I knew what array I needed to access in the BEGIN block. But it simply seems like an ugly solution. I noted the suggestion of a the $Config{'libpth'} setting, and as I understand it that is a setting from when perl is compiled.
Now is it possible to alter the Makefile to specify the BSLOADLIBS library path? I wouldn't be against that to solve the problem, I simply lack the knowledge on how to implement it properly. I am assuming this is all that is lacking as from reading the Makefile, that line is empty.

      318 # --- MakeMaker const_loadlibs section:
      319
      320 # ARS might depend on some other libraries:
      321 # See ExtUtils::Liblist for details
      322 #
      323 EXTRALIBS = -L/home/hdweb/ars/api_701p1/lib -licuucbmc -licu
+i18nbmc
      324 LDLOADLIBS = -L/home/hdweb/ars/api_701p1/lib -lpthread -licu
+ucbmc -licui18nbmc
      325 BSLOADLIBS =
      326 LD_RUN_PATH = /home/hdweb/ars/api_701p1/lib
[download]

I know this is the issue as ldd points to it:

$ ldd ~/perl/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/ARS/ARS.so
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x00d37000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00110000)
        libicuucbmc.so.32 => not found
        libicui18nbmc.so.32 => not found
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00228000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x4bfe4000)
[download]

After exporting LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/hdweb/ars/api_701p1/lib in bash, the two extra libraries are now properly found.