OZtwo: Just wanted to say, Thank You so much!! I was having the exact same problem, wracking my brain trying to figure out why Google wasn’t indexing my links. (I even went to the Google Webmaster Forum yesterday and got chewed out by a moderator who claimed I hadn’t searched hard enough for the answer.) No one bothered to ask me what the platform of my site.
I followed your advice, and voila: the very next day, Google had indexed 88 external links. Amazing. I really can’t thank you enough, as this has been a major frustration.