I was trying to use gluLookAt and the view was incorrectly oriented, especially the Up direction. However, the Up direction vector was correct defined. File version of the GLU32.DLL is 5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-0845).
I replaced the gluLookAt with my own version that was created based on the documentation http://www.opengl.org/documentation/specs/man_pages/hardcopy/GL/html/glu/lookat.html and the view started to operate correctly.
typedef union {
double data[3];
struct { double x, y, z; };
} VECTOR3;
void mygluLookAt(VECTOR3 _Eye, VECTOR3 _Center, VECTOR3 _Up)
{
VECTOR3 _c = unit(_Center - _Eye);
VECTOR3 _s = unit(crossp(_c, _Up));
VECTOR3 _u = unit(crossp(_s, _c));
double M[16];
M[0] = _s.x;
M[4] = _s.y;
M[8] = _s.z;
M[12] = 0.0;
M[1] = _u.x;
M[5] = _u.y;
M[9] = _u.z;
M[13] = 0.0;
M[2] = -(_c.x);
M[6] = -(_c.y);
M[10] = -(_c.z);
M[14] = 0.0;
M[3] = 0.0;
M[7] = 0.0;
M[11]= 0.0;
M[15]= 1.0;
glMultMatrixd(M);
glTranslated(-_Eye.x, -_Eye.y, -_Eye.z);
}