Thanks, I just now reproduced the problem with tar 1.26 but could not reproduce it with the latest git version.
this appears to be similar to this bug: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2011-06/msg00000.html which was fixed in tar upstream, here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2011-06/msg00001.html Maybe you could backport that fix to Debian?
