Comment 68 for bug 146918

 "Indicator applet" - "Updates existing panel configurations to add the applet"
Is a better description ,

But i-a item should *not* be present in the startup list , since it does not have anything to do with starting i-a every time the user logs in.

So , Sebastien is currently figuring a way to have it removed from the startup list while preserving the functions it presently does...
Let's hope he has some spare time before Karmic ;)

@era :
see this file for how it works > /usr/share/gnome-panel/add-indicator-applet.py