maven-rules for plugin version

[Gabriele Giacone <1o5g4r8o@gmail.com>]

Hi,
I'm trying to package freehep-export [1] which depends on
exec-maven-plugin [2] (now in NEW).
Upstream pom needs exec-maven-plugin version 1.0.2 and [2] is 1.1.1.
Applying the following patch it correctly builds

--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
       <plugin>
         <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
         <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
-        <version>1.0.2</version>
+        <version>1.1.1</version>
         <executions>
           <execution>
             <goals>
-- 

My question is: is there a way with maven.rules to solve without patching?
Or does it work only for dependencies, not for plugins?

Thanks
Gabriele

[1] http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-java/freehep/freehep-export.git
[2] http://ftp-master.debian.org/new/exec-maven-plugin_1.1.1-1.html