link in cell using xml

I am using and xml string to populate my table. I cannot seem to add and html anchor <a> tag into a cell. It seems to be ignored. Any Ideas?
I am using somthing like this...
<items>
<item>
<cell><a href='...'>data</a></cell>
</item>
</items>

here's the format with special entity format:

&lt;a href=&quot;...&quot;&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;

Daron,
That was the solution I needed. I am using Struts. I am now able to dynamically create the correct links in my action method and then pass the data to my jsp for use in the grid. Thank you very much!