Editing AP_News_Generator

This is a very basic question. I have the generator up and running, and its working perfectly but now i want to customize the way it looks on my website.

I know i have to edit NEWS.TPL and ive done this far, but for this section of code:

<p class="newsinfo">Posted by: <news_poster> on <news_posted> | <news_comments></p>

and this is how it appears on my site:

Posted by JDMstar on 2008-04-09 13:38 | Comments

Which is great, but where it shows COMMENTS i want it to show the NUMBER of comments/replies that was posted.

Ie:

Posted by JDMstar on 2008-04-09 13:38 | Comments (15)

How would i go about doing that?