expdp is painfully slow

I am using Oracle 11.1.0.7.1 on HP UNIX 11.0. I ma using expdp and find it extremely slow. However. Most of the waiting time is during metadata (see below) where it waits for several hours. When it starts exporting the rows, it progresses reasonably fast. Processing object type DATABASE_EXPORT/SCHEMA/TABLE/INDEX/DOMAIN_INDEX/ INDEX
I have seen some threads on Metalink as well as on Google. All otf tem point to these problems in Oracle 10.2 expdp version, but I see same problem in Oracle 11.1.0.7.1 as well. A suggestion to exclude STAITISTICS has not helped me:
expdp system/password directory=expdp_dir dumpfile=$BackupExportFile logfile=$TLOGFILE \
full=Y compression=all exclude=STATISTICS TRACE=480300 I have turned on expdp tracing and I see statements like following for various indexes and do not give me any clue to speed things up.

KUPW:14:48:25.668: 1: Base Process info: 6122 and processing status: C
and processing state: R
KUPW:14:48:25.668: 1: new state: R
KUPW:14:48:25.668: 1: new status: C
KUPW:14:48:25.668: 1: In procedure BUILD_SUBNAME_LIST with

KUPW:14:48:25.669: 1: In function NEXT_PO_NUMBER
KUPW:14:48:25.669: 1: FORALL called.
KUPW:14:48:25.676: 1: FORALL returned.
KUPW:14:48:25.678: 1: DBMS_LOB.TRIM called. v_md_xml_clob
KUPW:14:48:25.679: 1: DBMS_LOB.TRIM returned.
KUPW:14:48:25.679: 1: DBMS_METADATA.FETCH_XML_CLOB called. Handle:

Is ether anyway to speed expdp. Received on Sun Apr 04 2010 - 14:01:19 CDT