xml namespace error

[Ajay]

hi!

i have the following code to create a a document
ssock = StringIO.StringIO(inputString)
reader = Sax2.Reader()
doc = reader.fromStream(ssock)

input string simply contains <appel:RULE></appel:RULE>
when i run it, it throws a namespace error. i can understand where the
error is coming from (i haven't defined the namespace), but is there a way
to get past it? to get it to ignore the namespace?
the same thing in Java works fine (without worrying about the namespace).

thanks

cheers