LMDE mintupdate "Update pack info" fails (behind a proxy)

I'm using LMDE 64-bit behind a proxy.
mintupdate will refresh the available updates list, but freezes for a while after hitting the "Update pack info" button, failing to give any graphical feedback.
If run from the terminal the output is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintUpdate/mintUpdate.py", line 1190, in open_pack_info
    html = urllib2.urlopen(url)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 126, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 391, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 409, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 369, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1181, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/urllib2.py", line 1156, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 110] Connection timed out>

This problem is easily reproduced and the error happens every time. I suspect that the "Update pack info" function is not proxy aware. This error occurs with mintupdate-debian version 1.0.2.