You've mistaken me.
Gaim has an IRC client,a Yahoo client etc with some Tk Widgets for the meatware to interact with, Bitlbee however provides an irc daemon for the user to interact with, via their favourite IRC client, and uses Gaim's client libraries to go off and connect to other chat networks for you.
(for those who have no idea what i'm taking about Bitlbee is an IRC server that connects to icq/msn/yahoo as a client
@_=qw; ask f00li5h to appear and remain for a moment of pretend better than a lifetime;;s;;@_[map hex,split'',B204316D8C2A4516DE];;y/05/os/&print;