Hi Dirk,
the XML-Parser is not a "real" XML-Parser, but a very naiv text-parser:
It's used in the unit-test, but not really for productive use. It's very easy to break it, because it makes assumptions on formatting and attribute-sequence, and these assumptions may not be valid for for .osm file.
For productive use, this class is classpath-overwritten by the PBF-Parsing variant.
It does not use a call to "OsmCutter" anymore, but it calls (in that order):
OsmFastCutter, PosUnifier, WayLinker
I never tested it with the XML-Parser, but it should work in principle