curses is not imported under Linux (and Python 2.4)

[Konrad Koller]

import curses
produces the ImportError: No module named _curses
("from _curses import *"  in line 15 in __init__.py)
Of course imp.find_module ("_curses") reports the same error.
How can I make use of the curses package for writing a Python script
with curses?