Closer examination of the pixel dust revealed that they are remnants of transparency gone wrong. Somebody in the german gnome usenet group hinted me to a workaround -- Set the environment variable XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS in usr/bin/eagle. This resolved the issue for me:
/------/usr/bin/eagle-----
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z $DISPLAY ]; then
echo "eagle: cannot open display"
exit 1
fi
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
exec /usr/lib/eagle/bin/eagle "$@"
\-------------------------
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