pidgin not showing icq contacts

i just upgraded to ubuntu 7.10 and got the pidgin messenger. however, the problem is that even if i filled the gaps correctly (with the icq number and password), gaim/pidgin does not want to load/show my icq contacts, which should be stored on the icq server.

i find rewriting all the contacts in my list too hard-working, because i know that IMs should read the contacts from the server.

however, this problem was also in previous version - ubuntu 7.04 and gaim 2.0.0.

thank you for your help,

Eidam