Possible tar bug when restoring symlinks in a chrooted environment

I've come across what I *think* is a bug in the way GNU tar restores 
symbolically linked files.
The problem appears to relate to restoring symlinks that have absolute paths 
when in a chrooted environment.
Specifically, I have had this problem when rebuilding my filesystem after 
booting from a rescue disc and mounting the real filesystems under /mnt. 
After restoring from a tarball, symlinks that had absolute paths become empty 
files with null file permissions.

As an example, the proper listing for /bin/vi from ls -al is:
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root root  20 Feb  4 20:43 /bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi*

If I restore from my backup with filesystems mounted as normal, this is 
restored correctly. However, if I restore in the chrooted rescue environment, 
the listing becomes:
---------- 1 root root 20 Feb  4 20:43 /bin/vi

This occurs every time and does not seem to be related to the filesystem type, 
as I have replicated it with ext2 and ReiserFS types.

Not something that 's a problem in normal day-to-day use, but just what you 
don't need when you're trying to restore a broken system :-)

System details:
tar version 1.13.25
GNU/Linux Mandrake 9.0 (although I'm pretty sure I've had the problem on 
earlier versions) using the rescue image provided on the CD.
Filesystem: ext2 or ReiserFS

Commands used:
Building the archive:
tar --bzip2 -cX /tmp/backup-excludes --atime-preserve -p -f \
/tmp/full-backup.tar.bz2 /*

Restoring:
tar --bzip2 -xvf /tmp/full-backup.tar.bz2

It might be that I'm doing something wrong, although I haven't managed to work 
out what it might be. Apologies for bothering you if it *is* user error...

If I can provide any further information, please ask.

Thanks for a useful bit of software - I'd be lost without it :-)
-- 
Tony Green
Ipswich, Suffolk, England
Website http://www.beermad.org.uk/

*** No Micro$oft products were used in the generation of this communication 
***

*** A little something to keep the CIA spooks at Echelon busy ***
Hijack
Kabul