How do you embed LDAP ids in yum repository definition files for RAM communities configured for yum?

Hello.  I am attempting to configure one of my RAM communities as a YUM repository.  In the instructions, it says to setup the yum repository file with the following lines:

[ram]
name=Rational Asset Manager YUM repository
baseurl=http://user:pass@server.example.com/ram.ws/yum
gpgcheck=0

I configured mine as:

[sdiram]
name=RPM packages from the SDIRAM server - $basearch
baseurl=https://imitdscs%40us.ibm.com:**********@sdiram01.svl.ibm.com/ram.ws/yum
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
sslverify=false

When I run a yum command to list the packages available:

 yum --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo="sdiram" list available

I get the following connection error:

https://imitdscs%40us.ibm.com:********@sdiram01.svl.ibm.com/ram.ws/yum/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] PYCURL ERROR 7 - "couldn't connect to host"
Trying other mirror.

I can ping the RAM server from my linux box.  I can't tell if the error is being caused because of the use of my "email" based LDAP id or if its caused by something else.  If I replace the encoded %40 with the actual @ I get what looks like a parsing error from yum, so I don't think that is correct.  Anyone done this before?

Thanks,
Chris