Bug#49080: apt: /bin/sh: dpkg-preconfig: command not found while upgrading

[Marcin Owsiany <porridge@pandora.info.bielsko.pl>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.3.13
Severity: grave

here's what happens after a recent upgrade to potato
I'm not sure if this is apt's bug or dpkg's

piglet:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back
  mutt 
2 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/41.9kB of archives. After unpacking 1024B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
/bin/sh: dpkg-preconfig: command not found
E: Sub-process dpkg-preconfig --apt --priority=low --frontend=dialog returned an error code (127)
E: Failure running script dpkg-preconfig --apt --priority=low --frontend=dialog


-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Kernel Version: Linux piglet 2.0.36 #2 Sun Feb 21 15:55:27 EST 1999 i586 unknown

Versions of the packages apt depends on:
ii  libc6           2.1.2-9        GNU C Library: Shared libraries and timezone
ii  libstdc++2.10   2.95.2-1       The GNU stdc++ library