xsl:variable containing xsl:element

Hi,
I have the following problem when assigning a string to a variable. The
string contains HTML code in between.

<xsl:template match="Language/*">
  // This works fine - displaying the number bold
  This is my account <xsl:element name="b">123.456</xsl:element> now closed
  
  // This doesn't work
  <xsl:variable name="wholestring">This is my account <xsl:element
name="b">123.456</xsl:element> now closed</xsl:variable>
  <xsl:value-of select="string($wholestring)"/>
</xsl:template>



Any ideas? Thanks a lot,
Rainer

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