FBI Optimistic Siege at Cult Complex Will End Soon : Standoff: Following promising developments Friday, agents say they still think the affair is in its final stages.

For the second day in a row, federal negotiators said Saturday that they believed the three-week-old siege of Mt. Carmel may be nearing an end, but there was no sign through the course of the day that any mass exit was in the offing.

Negotiators also said they did not know exactly what astrological signs that cult leader David Koresh was talking about when he said they would have some bearing on when the standoff at the rural compound might end.

FBI spokesman Richard Swensen said his optimism was buoyed Friday night when Koresh spoke to negotiators for four hours, and the conversation was not the irrational meandering that has become his trademark since the siege began Feb. 28. During a raid on the Branch Davidian compound by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, four agents were killed and 16 others were injured.

“We are optimistic, we are hopeful,” said Swensen. “We are talking in the near term as opposed to the far term.”

But the agents surrounding the compound have had their hopes raised before, only to have Koresh falter at the final step of giving up. Most notable was on March 2, when he said he and his followers would surrender after an hourlong tape was played on several radio stations.

But at the end of the rambling sermon, Koresh backed off on his pledge to surrender. So far, 21 children, three women and three men have emerged from the compound. By Koresh’s count, there are still 103 people inside, including 17 children.

At a press conference Saturday, Swensen said he was unsure how many people had been killed inside the compound, although he believed at least two had died in the raid.

“It’s a question that gets addressed on our side, and he (Koresh) basically avoids that question,” Swensen said. He said those who had left the compound were asked that question, but no one seemed to have any idea, as if they had been kept in a separate part of the complex.

“We’re saying the people coming out don’t seem to have specific knowledge of how many were killed,” he said.

Swensen also identified the two men who came out of the compound Friday night as Brad Branch, 34, and Kevin Whitecliff, 31, both Americans. They were put in jail, and ATF spokesman Dan Conroy said they would be held as material witnesses.