what caused the 'missing separator' message from the make?

[Paul Lew]

I am using automake-1.5 and one of the open source library I am trying
to build use automake for its build.  However, the configure seems to
generate a malformed Makefile which failed to build with message:

    > configure ....
    > make -f Makefile
    ...
    Makefile:383: *** missing separator.  Stop.

THe Makefile around line 383 contains non-processed automake stuff:

  380 - distclean-compile:
  381 -         -rm -f *.tab.c
  382 -
  383 - @AMDEP_TRUE@@am__include@ @address@hidden(DEPDIR)/address@hidden@
  384 - @AMDEP_TRUE@@am__include@ @address@hidden(DEPDIR)/address@hidden@
  385 - @AMDEP_TRUE@@am__include@ @address@hidden(DEPDIR)/address@hidden@
  386 - @AMDEP_TRUE@@am__include@ @address@hidden(DEPDIR)/address@hidden@

What might be the problem of this?  Where should I begin to
troubleshoot?  Any help will be appreciated.  

Note: I can not upgrade to version 1.6 because I have another library
the does not work with autoconf 2.52 which is required by automake
1.6.