wagon-ssh or deploy plugin sometimes uses scp instead of configured pscp

Even though i've specified pscp and plink in settings.xml, the deploy plugin still seems to use "scp" , this is only the case for "retrieving previous metadata" though, the deploy executes successfully otherwise.

[INFO] Retrieving previous metadata from maven2@apache
Executing command: scp -i ......... <removed parameters for safety reasons/>
[WARNING] project information for avalon-logkit 2.1 could not be retrieved from repository
: maven2@apache due to an error: Exit code: 1 - 'scp' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.

[INFO] Repository 'maven2@apache' will be blacklisted

I'm using a snapshot version of wagon-ssh-external : wagon-ssh-external-1.0-alpha-6-20051116.003838-3.jar

The whole process is also incredibly slow, 2.5 minutes to deploy a 40k artifact. (windows xp), I'll test it on linux with native ssh.