Apache refuses to execute CGI citing permission errors

I am trying to get a CGI script to execute under Apache and while I have checked permissions and determined that Apache should be able to execute the script, it complains. I have pasted the following to demonstrate the problem.

[root@Smokeping htdocs]# ls -l
total 60
drwxr-xr-x  3   1003 1001 4096 Jul 24  2008 cropper
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root   13 May 16 10:20 index.cgi -> smokeping.cgi
drwxr-xr-x  4   1003 1001 4096 Jul 24  2008 resource
drwxr-xr-x  2   1003 1001 4096 Jul 24  2008 script
-rwxr-xr-x  1 apache 1001 2500 May 27 04:51 smokeping.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x  1 apache root   82 May 18 19:14 test.cgi
-rwxr-xr-x  1 apache 1001  663 Jul 24  2008 tr.cgi
=======================================
From the error log:
=======================================
[Wed May 27 09:12:48 2009] [error] [client 10.255.255.148] (13)Permission denied: exec of '/var/www/html/smokeping/index.cgi' failed
=======================================
Excerpts from the httpd.conf file:
=======================================
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
 
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/"
 
# "/var/www/cgi-bin" should be changed to whatever your ScriptAliased
# CGI directory exists, if you have that configured.
#
<Directory "/usr/local/smokeping/htdocs">
    AllowOverride None
#    Options None
    Options +Indexes FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/html/smokeping">
 Options +Indexes FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI
 AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from all
</Directory>

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