ld.exe: cannot find -liconv

[jalkadir gosonic ca]

specs
~~~~~
ms-windos xp
gtk+-2.6.9

When trying to compile a GTK+ program, the linker complains about not
being able to find the "iconv" library. I checked if this file existed in
my system and found out that though the "iconv.dll" exists the
corresponding 'iconv.dll.a' does not; as it is the case with the other
'dll s'.

Thus, DIA and GIMP are working w/o any problems, but because of the
missing developing file I am unable to link against this library.

I downloaded the *dev files from:
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html

Did I miss anything?
What can I do to fix this problem?

TIA