Yes, forcing version 1.95 of maven-hpi-plugin solves this problem. Thanks!
I added following fragment to my plugin's pom.xml:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jenkins-ci.tools</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-hpi-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.95</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
That'll do for now.
I still don't understand why maven did not pick up latest version of
maven-hpi-plugin automatically.
/elmir