[AUCTeX] problem getting AUCTeX up and running

[Wilson, Andrew]

I am a relative newbie, but liked and used AUCTeX on an old system (Debian), and am trying to get it running on my new one(Gentoo). My problem is embarrassingly simple:

Absolutely nothing happens when I click on the "Command" menu: I have no access
to any LaTeX tools through AUCTeX!

Emacs  : GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (i386-pc-linux-gnu, Motif Version 2.2.3)
 of 2005-03-04 on nemo.amd64.dev.gentoo.org
Package: AUCTeX 11.55

current state:
==============
(setq
 window-system 'x
 LaTeX-version "2e"
 TeX-style-path '("style/" "auto/" "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/style/"
                  "/var/lib/auctex/")
 TeX-auto-save t
 TeX-parse-self t
 TeX-master nil
 )

My .emacs file is attached too

.emacs
Description: .emacs