autoconf 2.61 incompatibility?

[Lars Hecking]

 I'm trying to build a software package that requires

AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign 1.7

 and

AC_PREREQ(2.54)

 on a machine that has automake-1.10 and autoconf-2.60 installed.

 configure finishes successfully, but make fails:

$ make
cd . && /bin/sh /tmp/pkg-x.y.z/config/missing --run autoheader
aclocal.m4:17: error: this file was generated for autoconf 2.61.
You have another version of autoconf.  If you want to use that,
you should regenerate the build system entirely.
aclocal.m4:17: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 63
autoheader: '/usr/local/bin/autom4te' failed with exit status: 63
make: *** [config.hin] Error 1
$ 

 The distribution package was built with autoconf 2.61 indeed, but why
 should that affect me so? Is the only possible fix to recreate the
 distribution with an older autoconf (>= 2.54)?