Alternate settings file not found

The settings.xml for maven is part of the workspace and checked out of SVN
together with the source source-code just before maven is executed. To configure
maven the "alternate settings file" option is used, but the final path is not
correct.

The setup is two SVN urls that must be checked out:
http://.../sccm-test
http://.../sccm/sccm-conf

The second project contains the settings.xml.

Some examples of what we see:

Alternate settings file: sccm-conf/settings.xml ->
Resulting Maven '-s' option:
/sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development
build/workspace/sccm-test/sccm-conf/settings.xml

Alternate settings file: ../sccm-conf/settings.xml
Resulting Maven '-s' option:
/sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development build/workspace/../sccm-conf/settings.xml
-> Simplified: /sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development
build/sccm-conf/settings.xml

Alternate settings file: ../workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml
Resulting Maven '-s' option:
/sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development
build/workspace/sccm-test/../workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml
-> Simplified: /sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development
build/workspace/workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml

Alternate settings file: ../../workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml
Resulting Maven '-s' option:
/sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/Development
build/workspace/../../workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml
-> Simplified: /sccm/var/db/hudson/FFFJ/jobs/workspace/sccm-conf/settings.xml

It seems that entering .. is interpreted by the Java code and then also by the
platform?