Thanks for your patience with this.
I have been working on DPKG_FORCE support[1]. I think what is required here is the same semantic as DPKG_FORCE=confask.
Patch to follow.
Mark
[1]
https://bugs.debian.org/925375
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)