I don't know how to use targetcli. I tried the simple command you gave in your bug report, but that failed for other reasons (some kind of input file is missing).
In any case, I just uploaded pyparsing 2.1.4+dfsg1-1 which has a number of bug fixes. Please try that. If it works for you, great! Please close this bug. If it still doesn't work for you, please provide a reproducible test case.