thanks for that, I'll go and read on this some more.
anyway, I modified item.tcl in ../package/news and took "set comment_link [general_comments_create_link $item_id ... etc...etc... outside its respective if statement, so it get evaluated no matter what.
I also commented out - set comment_link "" - within the 'else'
this modification only seems to have done the trick as far as I am concerned.