I had the same problem and had to install cairo 1.4.x to fix this
build problem.
Actually, not all version of cairo work well either (I'm not sure if it's been fixed or not). A few weeks (maybe months) ago, when I installed Debian Testing, which has cairo
1.4.9, I had issues with the back end not running. I remember there was some discussion on the mailing list about it and I think the recommended version is 1.4.10.
I just checked, and 1.4.10 is available for Testing now, so you can try that.
Stefan