Advice Needed! asp:DropDownList ddlCountries 'Is not declared'

Hi all and thanx in advance for your help.

I am fairly new to asp.net and have been fumbling around for days with the following issue:

I have an asp:DropDownList control inside of a CreateUserWizard that should be accessible to me in the code behind, but it keeps telling me that it is not declared??? I have tried everything to get access to this control to no avail. If I pull the control out of the guts of the CreateUserWizard, the asp:DropDownList control is accessible...go figure! Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

The .aspx code:

<asp:CreateUserWizard...>
 <WizardSteps>
  <asp:TemplatedWizardStep ID="Step1" runat=" ...