I have had the same problem and none of the solutions above worked for me. I also needed the background of the links to be transparent.
A very uncomfortable solution, but one that worked perfectly is to set the background to a transparent gif. Only needs to be 1x1 px as it will repeat.
#links a
{
display: block;
background: url(/images/interface/blank/1dot.gif);
}
This seems to have no side effects apart from one additional request to the server.