Chiming in here because I have a similar problem.
My xml to be transformed is
<cm:name>texthere</cm:name>
I've added xmlns:cm="http://example.org" exactly as it is written to the stylesheet declarations as such
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" ... xmlns:cm="http://example.org">
And my xslt code is
<xsl:variable name="var" select="cm:name"/>
"var" is returned blank and I'm really at an impasse as to how to access this data.
damaq, you might find this helpful: http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=4