osa-dispatcher startup fails with "Connection refused" error

Issue

• osa-dispatcher refuses to start with connection refused errors
• Receives following traceback while starting osa-dispatcher:

Starting osa-dispatcher: RHN 31458 2011/09/30 09:28:00 +02:00: ('Traceback (most recent call last):\n
  File "/usr/share/rhn/osad/jabber_lib.py", line 254, in setup_connection\n
    c = self._get_jabber_client(js)\n
  File "/usr/share/rhn/osad/jabber_lib.py", line 311, in _get_jabber_client\n
    c.connect()\n
  File "/usr/share/rhn/osad/jabber_lib.py", line 577, in connect\n
    jabber.Client.connect(self)\n
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/jabber/xmlstream.py", line 464, in connect\n
    else: self._sock.connect((self._hostIP, self._port))\n
  File "<string>", line 1, in connect\n
error: (111, \'Connection refused\')\n',)
                                                           [  OK  ]

• osa-dispatcher fails with osa-dispatcher dead but pid file exists