avoiding disable-output-escaping, how to output M$ wie

As I learn more XSLT, I want to correct some of my early sins.  But
how can I write the following w/o "disable-output-escaping"?

   <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;!--[if IE]&gt;</xsl:text>
   <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/~rodney/times/css/ieonly.css" media="screen" />
   <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&lt;![endif]--&gt;</xsl:text>

The rather obvious response is to include this file first
(unconditionally) and override the IE specific stuff w/ proper CSS
code that IE cannot parse (body>div, etc...).

Baby steps, I dont want to break my entire website just yet!  Since
this conditional "comment" is not proper XML, I don't think I can code
this "in the buf".  I tried a CDATA section, but the serializer escaped
the "<" and ">".

Any ideas?
-- 
Rodman