> The crux of my question is this:
> 
> Is there a way to get namespace prefix declarations into the 
> root element of the result tree through the XSLT API? 

With XSLT 2.0, use the xsl:namespace instruction

With XSLT 1.0, you can use xsl:copy-of to copy a namespace node from the
source document to the result document.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/