Turning off use of Libtool

[William S Fulton]

According to the documentation, AC_PROG_LIBTOOL in configure.ac turns on 
processing for libtool. Is there a way to turn off processing for 
libtool in a particular .am file even if AC_PROG_LIBTOOL is present in 
configure.ac? Automake uses libtool during the linking stage even when 
no libraries are being created. Is this by design?

This simple Automake file uses libtool during the linking stage:

AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign nostdinc subdir-objects 1.7.3
xyz_SOURCES =   bunch of .c and .cxx files
bin_PROGRAMS = xyz

I'm using automake-1.7.3 and autoconf-2.57.

Thanks
William