Take a release descriptor created by the Maven Release Plugin and use that to perform the actual release.
'org.apache.maven.continuum:continuum-release:1.1'
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.continuum</groupId>
<artifactId>continuum-release</artifactId>
<version>1.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency org="org.apache.maven.continuum" name="continuum-release" rev="1.1"/>
"org.apache.maven.continuum", "continuum-release", "1.1"