I just tested now. With Inkscape 0.48.2 r9819, I could do the conversion job on pure console.
But, on the other hand, as nothing is perfect, to install Inkscape, it's needed many X dependencies.
There is no such depedency .. actually, i found it rather impossible to get an inkscape running on a headless linux box as there is some depedency on X (last time I tried).