Java HotSpot Virtual Machine

I'm having difficulty accessing an HP lib from Java.

It finds where the library is, but fails soon after (still on the load).
The error message is from java.lang.UnstatisfiedLinkError and is "Exec format error". So I'm guessing it's to with how I'm creating my library.

My c code references functions in an archived static library, which I bind into the library I'm creating ( cc z -I<lib-path> blah.o liboldblah.a -o libnewblah.sl). This is where I think things are going wrong for me. I've tried using ld, but it complains that the library "liboldblah" isn't PIC and to re-compile it with z, which I want to avoid if possible.

Any help much appreciated.