unmet dependencies: libcurl4-openssl-dev

[Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>]

How does one go about fixing broken packages?  I've recently started
using debian and apart some fiddling to get the latest emacs24.4 on
wheezy I have not done anything on the system.  When I tried to
install libcurl4, I get the following error.

apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. 

[snipped 5 lines]

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libcurl4-openssl-dev : Depends: librtmp-dev but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages


Googling around and checking a few forums with various incantations of
 apt-get with autoremove/clean/install/dist-upgrade didn't sort out
 the problem.  I now have no idea how to fix this issue.

I have a stock install of debian-kde iso and the current version seems
to be

cat /etc/debian_version 
7.8
uname -a
Linux sivaram 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.65-1+deb7u1 x86_64 GNU/Linux

What should I do please to get the package installed?

 sivaram

p.s first time user of debian

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