AS3, Access public variable within Movie Clip

Question

Sorry for simple question, but...

I have DocumentClass which has public variable kTemp:

public var kTemp:Number = 0;

I Also have Movie Clip which has some internal timeline code with this fragment:

var counter1:int = 0;  
counter1 = kTemp;

Strangely enough, but the last line gives an error:

1120: Access of undefined property kTemp. counter1 = kTemp

What am I doing wrong?

I though that global variables are seen from everywhere.
What is the simplest method to get value of public variable inside movie clip?

Answer 1

Using google I found only this decision which works in my case:

var _root=MovieClip(root);
var counter1:int;
counter1 = _root.kTemp;  

I also tried the combo: var public static + Classname.variable, but it doesn't work (Error: something like unknown property of class)...