Error executing Maven: Non-parseable settings

При запуске любой процедуры Maven в IntelliJ IDEA (clean или build) Maven ругается на мой файл setting.xml:

[ERROR] Error executing Maven.
[ERROR] 1 problem was encountered while building the effective settings
[FATAL] Non-parseable settings C:\.m2\settings.xml: only whitespace content allowed before start tag and not - (position: START_DOCUMENT seen ... used when the setting is not specified) are provided. | |-->\r\n\r\n-... @7:2)  @ C:.m2\settings.xml, line 7, column 2

И непонятно, какая синтаксическая ошибка ему не нравится.

В файле setting.xml на @7:2 расположены строки:

-<settings 
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd" 
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
 xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0">