Version:            (using Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources

Description:
Since the update to the KDE 4.4 Beta 1 and now Beta 2 packages provided by Ubuntu Kopete takes almost a minute to start up properly. Closing Kopete takes almost half a minute as well.
Besides that, Kopete works normal.

The problem is reproducable everytime I start Kopete, and was not present with former Kopete versions.

Reproduce steps:
1.) Start Kopete
2.) Wait until it is fully loaded and the interface responds to mouse clicks again (showing menus, etc.).

Expected result:
Kopete should load in only few seconds.

Actual result:
Kopete takes almost a minute to properly load.

What I've tried so far to fix/narrow down the problem:
1.) kopete --noconnect --noplugins
Didn't improve the time.
2.) mv kopeterc kopeterc_tmp
Kopete came up much faster. When I started to re-add my identities the start time was close to a minute again.
3.) strace -f kopete
The strace is full of messages like:
stat("/etc/localtime", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=2309, ...}) = 0
For several seconds, strace does not bring up anything else than these lines.