R help - Apr 2003 - R.exp file on AIX 4.3.3

I tried to compile R 1.7.0 on AIX 4.3.3 today. My initial error message was that
../../etc/R.exp could not be found.

I traced my way through the Makefiles to find where it should have been created,
and found it in src/main/Makefile. I then tried typing make ../../etc/R.exp (in
the src/main directory), but ldAIX4 created a nearly empty file (contains only
"#! ." on line one).

So can anyone tell me why the normal make process doesn't create R.exp and
how can I fix it? I am using GNU make 3.79.1, and gcc 2.95.3 (Fortran Front End
version 0.5.25)

Thanks