I'm experieincing the following error trying to access the iSeries database via Perl CGI

My Perl CGI works fine when invoked from the PASE environment but when it is 
invoked from a browser I get bupkiss.  I put some diagnostic prints in the CGI 
and from what I'm getting it appears that the CGI fails on the following 
statement:

$sth = $dbh->prepare($stmt) or die "prepare got error " . $dbh->err;

The specific error I'm getting from a Perl trace is the following:

 DBD::DB2::db prepare failed: Token ¢ was not valid. Valid tokens: ( END SET 
CALL DROP FREE HOLD LOCK OPEN WITH ALTER BEGIN CLOSE.
  at dbtest4 line 14, <IN> chunk 160.                                           
                                                  
 Prepare failed -104 at dbtest4 line 14, <IN> chunk 160.                        
                                                  
 
DBI::CODE(0x202b7b18)(/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/DeveloperTools/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/aix/DBI.pm:339):
                           

Has anyone seen this?  If so please contact me.

Regards...George