Spring – No persistence units parsed from {classpath*:META-INF/persistence.xml}

Using Spring Core 3.0.5, Hibernate 3.6.0.
The title of this question is the message of a java.lang.IllegalStateException raised on starting a Tomcat webserver (6.0.29) with an application I am maintaining.

applicationContext.xml says:

<bean id="emf" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean" scope="singleton">
   <property name="jpaVendorAdapter">
     <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter" />
  </property>
</bean>

persistence.xml is in the META-INF directory of a jar file the project includes. Expedissimo.web.war has a WEB-INF/classes folder with said .jar.

The complete exception traceback on starting the server is:

GRAVE: Exception lors de l'envoi de l'évènement contexte initialisé
(context initialized) à l'instance de classe d'écoute (listener)
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error
creating bean with name 'emf' defined in ServletContext resource
[/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed;
nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: No persistence
units parsed from {classpath*:META-INF/persistence.xml} at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1420)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:519)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:291)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:288)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:190)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:563)
at
org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:895)
at
org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:425)
at
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.createWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:276)
at
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:197)
at
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:47)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4135)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4630)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:791)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:771)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:546)
at
org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:637)
at
org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptors(HostConfig.java:563)
at
org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:498)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1277)
at
org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:321)
at
org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1053)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:785)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:445)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:519)
at
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:581) at
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at
org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289) at
org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414) Caused
by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: No persistence units parsed from
{classpath*:META-INF/persistence.xml} at
org.springframework.orm.jpa.persistenceunit.DefaultPersistenceUnitManager.obtainDefaultPersistenceUnitInfo(DefaultPersistenceUnitManager.java:373)
at
org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.determinePersistenceUnitInfo(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:247)
at
org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:196)
at
org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:308)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1477)
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1417)

... 36 more

persistence.xml says:

<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org    /2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd" version="2.0">
<persistence-unit name="serv2010pool" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider> 
    <properties>
        <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="false" /> 
        <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true" /> 
        <property name="use_sql_comments" value="true" /> 
        <property name="hibernate.autocommit" value="false" /> 
        <property name="javax.persistence.jdbc.driver"     value="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"/>
        <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect"/>
        <property name="hibernate.connection.insee.poolName" value="serv2010pool" />
        <property name="hibernate.connection.provider_class" value=
            "fr.insee.config.hibernate.InseeConnectionProvider"/>           
    </properties>
</persistence-unit>

The same persistence unit descriptor, when used outside Spring in the batch sibling project, is found and parsed correctly from

    emf = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("serv2010pool");

The batch project, just like the web project, includes Serv2010-1.0.jar, which has META-INF/persistence.xml . All annotated classes are in this common jar.

Deploying inside Eclipse v3.6 raises the exception. The WEB-INF/classes/ folder in the .war doesn't have the persistence.xml file. Adding it manually and restarting the server doesn't help.

Any idea? I'm running out of tricks here, thanks for providing any.
CChris