>>> from xml.dom import pulldom
>>> dom_builder = pulldom.SAX2DOM()
>>> parser.setContentHandler(dom_builder)
>>> parser.parseString("AC   P97430; O09081; O09082;")
>>> dom_builder.document

>>> for node in dom_builder.document.getElementsByTagName("ac_number"):
...     print node.firstChild.nodeValue
...
P97430
O09081
O09082
>>>