problem w/ struct in DECLARE SECTION

i have a struct declaration (struct user {...}) that compiles ok -
contains chars, shorts, ints, longs.

1. if it is outside of BEGIN/END DECLARE, then variables declared inside
BEGIN/END
    that use it (ie, "struct user localvar;") fail with a parse error
from ecpg.
2. if i put it inside a BEGIN/END DECLARE SECTION, ecpg reports a parse
error at the
    closing '}'.

typedefs don't seem to help, either. how can i declare a structure that
will be used in many functions (ie, "struct user * x")?