error subscribing to publication

Hi All,
[CURRENT SET UP]
I have two SQL 2k Ent servers in two locations.
SVR1 has 2 publications (snapshot and merge) the SVR2 subscribes to.
SVR2 republishes these, so that a number of local MSDE clients can
subscribe to them.
SVR1 also has a number of local MSDE subscribers.
[PROBLEM]
Everything was working great, however this afternoon I tried to add a new
MSDE subscriber (through enterprise manager on my machine, as opposed to
SVR1) to SVR1 and got the following message ?
SQL Server Enterprise Manager could not retrieve information about the
publications from Publisher 'SVR1'.
Error 208: Invalid object name 'syspublications'.
Invalid object name 'sysextendedarticlesview'.
I really don't want to drop publications on this server, and so am trying
to find a way of solving this problem, rather than redeploying the
replication structure.
Any help in understanding or troubleshooting this would be greatly
recieved !
TIA.
Ranjeet.
oddly, if I script a subscription and run it, all is OK.
It appears enterprise manager in trying to enumerate the publications is
failing, and so preventing me from subscribing users through EM.
Does anyone know how the publications are enumerated - is there a view /
table / SP that exists for this ?
TIA
Ranjeet.