This is the section from the log email that the autoupdater sents when it fails, I think this is the section that it is giving me a hard time, what will be the recomendation to fix this problem and continue with the autoupdater:

Preparing for packages installation...
----- begin of output -----
Installing perl-CGI-2.81-88.7.i386.rpm
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Apache.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Carp.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Cookie.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Fast.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Pretty.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Push.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Switch.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
file /usr/share/man/man3/CGI::Util.3pm.gz from install of perl-CGI-2.81-88.7 conflicts with file from package perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art

i ended up removing the perl-5.8.5-9.rhel3.art
and installing the perl that is required in the plesk docs
perl-5.8.0-88.4.i386.rpm
found here
http://ftp.die.net/pub/dierpms/redhat/rhel3/

afterwards ran up2date which then upgraded the package to
perl-5.8.0-89.10
and had to get the key manual update as it failed to auto upgrade
and all is good

Thanks for your help, I will try that