[Mingw-cross-env-list] Newbie, mxe & compiling QEMU 1.2 for Windows

[Mike Levin]

Hello MXE cross compilers. Total newbie here to cross-compiling.
Tackling QEMU 1.2.0 as my first project. I'm on Ubuntu 12.10.

mxe is installed in /opt/mxe and installed all the optional libraries
with a "make".

I set my path:
export PATH=/opt/mxe/usr/bin:$PATH

I added this to the top of QEMU's MakeFile:
CC=$(CROSS)gcc
LD=$(CROSS)ld
AR=$(CROSS)ar
PKG_CONFIG=$(CROSS)pkg-config

This is my configure command:
./configure --target-list=i386-softmmu --enable-curses

And this is my make command:
make CROSS=i686-pc-mingw32-

It does not invoke the cross-compiler. Instead, it builds the binaries
that work properly on Linux. Am I missing something?

Per some googling, I also tried making this link:
ln -s /opt/mxe/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/ mingw-cross-env

Still the same results of the default compiler being used. Any advice
for a newb? What else to check?

Mike