There actually is a way, you can use Skype4Pidgin. However this requires you to have skype running, but you are able to chat with your skype contacts through Pidgin. I do have to note that I've used this with Finch (also uses the purple library) and I've had one incident that I was talking to one person and one of my messages was mysteriously sent to a group chat instead of that one person. I've only had that happen to me once and I've not had that with Pidgin.

Here's the link: http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/