ElementTree - Why not part of the core?

[doug.bromley at gmail.com]

Why is the ElementTree API not a part of the Python core?
I've recently been developing a script for accessing the Miva API only
to find all the core API's provided by Python for parsing XML is messy
and complicated.  Many of the examples I see for parsing the data using
these API's uses a similar additional Class for collapsing the XML data
into a more manageable format.
This is clearly not following the Python-way of clean, simple code and
easy development.

ElementTree on the other hand provides incredibly easy access to XML
elements and works in a more Pythonic way.  Why has the API not been
included in the Python core?