The following conversation occurred on the Mt.Gox IRC chat at about 21:20pm GMT on February the 4th, today. Only a screenshot remains of it:

This clearly shows the channel administrator, ne0futur, who is a contractual employee of Mt.Gox explaining what appears to be a strong lead they have on solving the withdrawal problems they are having. Ne0futur confirmed that it is a technical problem related to incompatibility of their Bitcoin client with the network, but it was not possible for him to ascertain the possible solution without the necessary technical knowledge. Mt.Gox developers were not available on the IRC for comment.

Currently, this is only one of the many leads which are being investigated by the Mt.Gox developers, and this may or may not indicate that they are close to a solution. One can only hope so, for the good of the Bitcoin community and the Mt.Gox users.