>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import parse, Element
>>> doc = parse('pred.xml')
>>> root = doc.getroot()
>>> root
<Element 'stop' at 0x100770cb0>

>>> # Remove a few elements
>>> root.remove(root.find('sri'))
>>> root.remove(root.find('cr'))
>>> # Insert a new element after <nm>...</nm>
>>> root.getchildren().index(root.find('nm'))
1
>>> e = Element('spam')
>>> e.text = 'This is a test'
>>> root.insert(2, e)

>>> # Write back to a file
>>> doc.write('newpred.xml', xml_declaration=True)
>>>