Git provider fails to support 'release:perform' if not releasing from remote HEAD

During the 'release:perform' phase using Git provider the following commands are issued:

[INFO] Checking out the project to perform the release ...
[INFO] Executing: /bin/sh -c cd /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target && git clone git://git.shopzilla.com/site/client/sas-client /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target/checkout
[INFO] Working directory: /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target
[INFO] Executing: /bin/sh -c cd /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target/checkout && git pull git://git.shopzilla.com/site/client/sas-client tag root-5.18-uk
[INFO] Working directory: /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target/checkout

If the branch that is being released has conflicts (that cannot be automatically resolved) with the current HEAD at the remote server, the 'pull' with fail due to merge conflicts. A manual execution can look like:

[pettermahlen@Petters-MacBook-Pro target (uk-release)]$ git clone git://git.shopzilla.com/site/client/sas-client /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target/checkout
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/pettermahlen/git/sas-client/target/checkout/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 72993, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (18392/18392), done.
remote: Total 72993 (delta 40752), reused 71454 (delta 39845)
Receiving objects: 100% (72993/72993), 38.22 MiB | 2724 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (40752/40752), done.
[pettermahlen@Petters-MacBook-Pro target (uk-release)]$ cd checkout/
[pettermahlen@Petters-MacBook-Pro checkout (master)]$ git pull git://git.shopzilla.com/site/client/sas-client tag root-5.18-uk
Auto-merging client/pom.xml
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in client/pom.xml
Auto-merging core/pom.xml
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in core/pom.xml
Auto-merging model/pom.xml

Pull does a fetch and a merge with what is currently checked out. A potential fix would be to rather than the 'git pull' command issue the following:

git checkout <scm.tag>

That's what I did to get past this situation, and I believe that should work as a general solution.