emacs replaces a remote (gvfs/sftp) symbolic link with a regular file when saved

Environment: GNU Emacs version 23.2.1 on Ubuntu Lucid.

I have a remote filesystem mounted locally using Gnome's gvfs/sftp protocol. Upon editing a remote file via its symlink (also remote), and then saving it, emacs replaces the remote symlink with the edited copy of the target file. The target file is untouched.

local:~/remote/prakash/tmp> ln -sv ../.bashrc
./.bashrc' -> `../.bashrc'

local:~/remote/prakash/tmp> ls -l ./.bashrc ../.bashrc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 prakash prakash     9 2011-06-13 16:29 .bashrc -> ../.bashrc
-rwx------ 1 prakash praka开发者_开发知识库sh 10269 2011-06-13 16:29 ../.bashrc

# ... Editing and saving ~/prakash/tmp/.bashrc in emacs ...

local:~/remote/prakash/tmp> ls -l ./.bashrc ../.bashrc
-rwxrwxrwx 1 prakash prakash 10270 2011-06-13 16:30 .bashrc
-rwx------ 1 prakash prakash 10269 2011-06-13 16:29 ../.bashrc

As can be seen above, the link to ../.bashrc was replaced by a copy of the edited file and the target file is unmodified.

Searching for symbolic-link and symlink via apropos didn't turn up anything useful.

How do I prevent this from happening?

This is being caused by a gnome-vfs bug: GVFS Symbolic Links are Destroyed, and has nothing to with emacs.