Hi Karin,
If you see thru the JLS
"Inner classes may inherit static members that are not compile-time constants even though they may not declare them. Nested classes that are not inner classes may declare static members freely, in accordance with the usual rules of the
Java programming language. Member interfaces (�8.5) are always implicitly static so they are never considered to be inner classes. "
Which clearly indicates that a static class is not a inner class. its a member class same as the interface defined within a class (member interface)
Hope this helped you.
Lawrence