generating conditional comment in html output

Hi

I have a stylesheet which has been turning XML into HTML without batting an
eyelid but somebody has requested that the output HTML contain some
conditional styling. This means that at one point in the output I have to
insert the string

  <!--[if gte IE 7]>

and at another point I have to insert the string

  <![endif]-->

I've tried using &lt; in <xsl:text>, using <xsl:value-of> a variable, using
d-o-e, and none of these options seems to work. They either display the
conditional comment in the browser with < and > (and an editor shows the
literal string "& l t ;" in the HTML) or without, or I get errors telling me
I have malformed code. I'm processing with Saxon in XSL2, and rendering with
IE7 and IE8.

What is the proper way to do this please? I found many potential answers in
the FAQ but I haven't found one that works :-(

Cheers
T