colspan and rowspan in xml + css?

I unsuccessfully tried to figure out a pure xml + css approach to
emulate html tables' colspan and rowspan.

My sources of informations are the css 2.1 spec and Håkon and Bert's
book in its 3rd edition.

Is it possible at all without resorting to x/html itself (with has its
own limits) or xsl (which is too complex for the context I'm working in)?
I've got the impression that I miss something really hard or really
trivial :-(


Regards
Raffaello Giulietti