Some better handling of error in the configuration file

So, I have left some merge conflict markers in my setup.cfg and this how the pep8 (run through flake8) dealt with it:

ConfigParser.py:546:_read:ParsingError: File contains parsing errors: /home/matej/archiv/knihovna/repos/m2crypto/setup.cfg
    [line  2]: '<<<<<<< 642f88cb1b6027e184d9a662b255f7fea4d9eacc\n'
    [line  9]: '=======\n'
    [line 12]: '>>>>>>> Open trunk for 0.22.\n'

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/flake8", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('flake8==2.0', 'console_scripts', 'flake8')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flake8/main.py", line 21, in main
    flake8_style = get_style_guide(parse_argv=True, config_file=DEFAULT_CONFIG)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flake8/engine.py", line 76, in get_style_guide
    styleguide = StyleGuide(**kwargs)
  File "/home/matej/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pep8.py", line 1788, in __init__
    arglist, parse_argv, config_file, parser)
  File "/home/matej/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pep8.py", line 2074, in process_options
    options = read_config(options, args, arglist, parser)
  File "/home/matej/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pep8.py", line 1999, in read_config
    if config.read(os.path.join(parent, fn) for fn in PROJECT_CONFIG):
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 305, in read
    self._read(fp, filename)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 546, in _read
    raise e
ParsingError: File contains parsing errors: /home/matej/archiv/knihovna/repos/m2crypto/setup.cfg
    [line  2]: '<<<<<<< 642f88cb1b6027e184d9a662b255f7fea4d9eacc\n'
    [line  9]: '=======\n'
    [line 12]: '>>>>>>> Open trunk for 0.22.\n'

Local variables in innermost frame:
sectname: 'flake8'
cursect: OrderedDict([('__name__', 'flake8'), ('ignore', ['E402,N806,N803,N802,E501']), ('tag_build', ['.dev']), ('tag_svn_revision', ['1'])])
e: File contains parsing errors: /home/matej/archiv/knihovna/repos/m2crypto/setup.cfg
    [line  2]: '<<<<<<< 642f88cb1b6027e184d9a662b255f7fea4d9eacc\n'
    [line  9]: '=======\n'
    [line 12]: '>>>>>>> Open trunk for 0.22.\n'
fpname: '/home/matej/archiv/knihovna/repos/m2crypto/setup.cfg'
vi: '='
mo: None
optname: 'tag_svn_revision'
fp: <open file '/home/matej/archiv/knihovna/repos/m2crypto/setup.cfg', mode 'r' at 0x2d07b70>
lineno: 12
line: ''
self: <ConfigParser.RawConfigParser instance at 0x2d522d8>
optval: '1'

Is the traceback really the best solution, couldn't we have some civilized way of dealing with errors?