Many Python extension modules now require distutils in order to be properly installed. Could you either add distutils or update Python to version 2.0 (version 2.0 includes distutils)? There are other less important reasons to upgrade to 2.0 but distutils will soon become a necesity.
distutils is in rawhide currently.
We shipped Python2.2 in Red Hat Linux 7.3. Closing as 'currentrelease'.