problems with panel and gnome-session

[Grant Likely <grantlikely home com>]

I've noticed this problem over the last couple of releases
of gnome.  When I start up gnome-session, it restarts all of
the programs that were running during the last session, 
including the panel, but then it goes and starts up a second
panel which interfers with the first.  However, it doesn't
do this all the time.  It's as if there is a race condition
on the starting of the second panel.  What am I doing wrong?

Here's what I have done:
I got the latest sources as of Feb 4
Compiled them on RedHat 5.2
deleted my old .gnome and .gnome_private dirs
modified my .Xclients to look like this:
   #!/bin/sh
   icewm &
   exec gnome-session
started X and setup the panel the way I like it
   (one edge panel on the bottom and a corner panel on
   each side of the screen at the top.  About 8 applets
   are running in the panel: pager, mount*3, mailcheck,
   clock, and some monitors)
Shutdown gnome and then log back in (I use xdm)

Please help
Grant.