character references in match patterns

With the old version of xt the following match pattern 
(including character references) worked w/o problems.

<xsl:template match="&#x0440;&#x0443;&#x0441;">

With the present version of xt I get an "illegal character"
message. Is the use of character references (now) forbidden
in match patterns (I thought they were bona fide characters)?

PS. These Unicode-based character references corrrespond to
    Cyrillic letters.

Dr. Michel Goossens     Phone: (+41 22) 767-5028
CERN, IT Division       Fax  : (+41 22) 767-8630
CH-1211 Geneva 23       Email: michel.goossens@xxxxxxx
Switzerland           



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