><xsl:template match="display/textbox/textbox-head/title">
><xsl:variable name="role_title"
>select="parent::textbox-body/parent::textbox[@role]"/>


Well it seems I am going nuts (Time to go home a take a nap). For the sake 
brevity I misspelled the textbox-head to textbox-body while preparing a 
sample file for post. Apologies for that, my real code do says 
select="parent::textbox-head/parent::textbox[@role] 



>yet in your code snippet you have no "display" element at all and your 
>"title" element 

Will this will have affect *without display* as I am matching the @role of 
grandparent  *textbox*. I do not see any necessity to include display 
element.


As Praveen has suggested 

parent::textbox-head/parent::textbox/@role WORKS

but

parent::textbox-head/parent::textbox[@role] FAILS. Can't we use [@role] 
instead of /@role. ??????

Thanks everybody for looking into it.

Pankaj