I'm voting for the talking approach as well, just because there may be valuable information we can get out of them, and if things turn sour, I mean, we [i]can[/i] kill them off. 

I won't be volunteering Leif to be one of the spokespersons, simply because he is in no condition to do any speaking, because who wants to talk to anyone after having their ass zapped by evil Dwemer spiders?