Accessing a protected variable of PreparedStatement

Hi, the environment is Java 1.5, Tomcat 5.5, Postgres 8.1, Eclipse 3.1.1 and Windows XP Pro.
I want to create a function that reads PreparedStatement attributes. The ps is passed as generic object function parameter and then casted to PreparedStatement. I can access to PreparedMetaData and other stuffs, but not to the _stmt properties and methods (like QueryString, query parameters etc). In fact _stmt is a protected property of PreparedStatement. My question is: why, as seen in debug mode, Eclipse can access it and all its methods and properties?
How can I access to _stmt?

Thank you.


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