g++ not finding <stddef.h> via <cstddef>

[Bernd Jendrissek <bernd.jendrissek@gmail.com>]

I was chasing down why gettext wouldn't build and found CXX= : in one of
its generated Makefiles, and it turns out g++ can't see <cstddef> whilst
it *can* see <stddef.h>.  gcc can also see <stddef.h>

Can anyone tell me in what way exactly my system is misconfigured, and
what I can do to make #include <cstddef> work?

[On my system, /usr/local is a symlink to /home/newdisk/usr-local, hence
the funny paths being visible.]

berndj@localhost:/tmp$ cat /tmp/foo.cpp
#include <stddef.h>

int main()
{
}
berndj@localhost:/tmp$ g++ -v /tmp/foo.cpp -o /tmp/a.out
Using built-in specs.
Target: i686-pc-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../gcc-4.3.1/configure --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-shared --disable-static --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/local/include/c++/4.3.1 --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,treelang
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.3.1 (GCC) 
COLLECT_GCC_OPTIONS='-v' '-o' '/tmp/a.out' '-shared-libgcc' '-mtune=generic'
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/cc1plus -quiet -v -iprefix /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/ -D_GNU_SOURCE /tmp/foo.cpp -quiet -dumpbase foo.cpp -mtune=generic -auxbase foo -version -o /tmp/ccpO11fe.s
ignoring nonexistent directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/include"
ignoring duplicate directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include"
ignoring duplicate directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include-fixed"
ignoring nonexistent directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/include"
#include "..." search starts here:
#include <...> search starts here:
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include-fixed
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/i686-pc-linux-gnu
 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/backward
 /usr/local/include
 /usr/include
End of search list.
GNU C++ (GCC) version 4.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
        compiled by GNU C version 4.3.1, GMP version 4.2.1, MPFR version 2.2.1.
GGC heuristics: --param ggc-min-expand=90 --param ggc-min-heapsize=113195
Compiler executable checksum: 43dc44fca57738655f9116114f886dc1
In file included from /tmp/foo.cpp:1:
/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:48:25: error: stddef.h: No such file or directory
In file included from /tmp/foo.cpp:1:
/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:55: error: '::ptrdiff_t' has not been declared
/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:56: error: '::size_t' has not been declared

The only [excluding those in directories for other versions & targets of
GCC] <stddef.h> on my system are:

/usr/include/linux/stddef.h
/usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include/stddef.h

TIA