1. add '\' in front of '<' in password

2. passing username and password in url
  https://username:'pass<1234'@system.test.com'

3. used uri_escape from URI::Escape

uri_escape($pwd)

4. encoded using base64

$r->header( "Content-Type" => "application/soap+xml;charset=UTF-8", "SOAPAction" => "", "Authorization" => "Basic U1BDX1NJVEUyNFg3OjNmUlRMb2NjQmZmWHk=" );


sub do_webservice
   {
      my ( $weburl, $usr, $password, $webxml ) = @_;
      print FD "\nXML: \n$webxml\n";
      print FD "\nURL: \n$weburl\n";
      my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
      $ua->ssl_opts( verify_hostnames => 0 );
      my $r = HTTP::Request->new( "POST", $weburl ) or warn "POST FAILED:$!\n";;
      $r->header( "Content-Type" => "application/soap+xml;charset=UTF-8", "SOAPAction" => "" );
      $r->authorization_basic( $usr, $password );
      $r->content($webxml);
      my $response = $ua->request($r);
      print FD "START Dumper of $response\n";
      print FD Dumper $response;
      print FD "END Dumper of $response\n";
      print FD "DEBUG: Response is $response \n";
      return $response;
   }