How to refresh gnome-panel, other than using killall ?

["Puthali H.B" <bputtali novell com>]

hi,

I want to know if there's a way to refresh entire gnome-panel or only
selected launchers on it, programmatically. 

The problem I'm facing is, I change some fields in the .desktop file
corresponding to a launcher, but it doesn't get reflected on the panel.
I can not use killall, as running applets get killed and some fail to
come up afterwards. 

So I wanted to know if there is some gnome-api which I can call, to
refresh the panel or only the launcher also?

thanks,
Puthali