Setting an environment var in menu.xml?

[roland at steeltorch.com]

Hello, I'm trying to get this to work:

  <item label="here">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>DISTCC_DIR=/var/tmp/.distcc sudo
distccmon-gnome</execute></action>
  </item>

But it won't execute.  That works fine if I do it on my command prompt.
I see this on my console window when I try to do run the command via
openbox's menu:

(openbox3:2238): Openbox-WARNING **: failed to execute
'DISTCC_DIR="/var/tmp/.distcc" sudo distccmon-gnome': Failed to execute
child process "DISTCC_DIR=/var/tmp/.distcc" (No such file or directory)

Any suggestions for me?
-rgm