As far as I can tell, its only a problem with libparted and tools that rely on that.
I personally use cfdisk as its very intuitive and allows you to do things normally not allowed by most things, similar to fdisk does but is a bit more friendly.
So, what is it you want to do?
Please remember, the way that Linux now handles DISKS period, if you have anything newer the 2.6.15 (and some earlier kernels depending on the distribution), only allows 16 total partitions (up-to 4 primary/extended-container and up-to 14 extended partitions (barring any more than one primary and one extended container).
One thing you need to do is report a bug.
Appears to be similar ones but nothing like yours:
http://bugs.debian.o...e=both;src=parted
Nor in the Alioth project (alioth is Debian's "sourceforge" type of project)
http://parted.alioth...trac.cgi/report/1