On Tuesday, President Petar Stoyanov met representatives of the Children of the Balkans initiative, who handed him their Message to the Children of the World.

The initiative is a part of the world movement Ecoforum for Peace supported by the United Nations. Vesselin Neikov, chairman of the Ecoforum, and Dimitar Popov, chairman of the committee organizing the World Children's Crusade, accompanied a group of children from the Balkans at their meeting with the president.

The crusade started three years ago in Bulgaria and was welcomed by Koufi Anan, secretary general of United Nations. The message has been blessed by Pope John II and has already been handed to Konstantinos Stefanopolus, president of Greece. All the Balkan presidents will have the message within two weeks' time.

During the meeting with Stoyanov, the representatives of the initiative talked about their personal message for peace connected to the events in Macedonia.

Their statement read: "We are saying `yes' for peace but the Balkans are covered with shootings again. That is the reason we approach you from both sides of the fire and appeal for stopping the killings and death. We used to play together with Macedonian and Albanian friends in the peaceful yards unlike now."

The representatives also sought better faith and tranquil games, living birds in the skies and happy families. The message ends with a request to stop and sign a peace treaty following their example.

Rosen Krastev, a member of the initiative, sang a song and was announced as a prince of the crusade (something done every year).

According to a UNICEF poll, a child's main wish is to be loved and their confidence in politicians drops with age. The majority of Bulgarian children feel happy, mainly because of their family, friends and school, showed a representative poll conducted among 400 Bulgarian children by the Bulgarian National Committee (BNC) for UNICEF. The results of the poll were presented at a national conference on Monday dedicated to children's problems.

The poll was part of another, bigger one, The Voice of the Young, carried out in 35 countries in Europe and Asia. It covered 15,200 children aged 9 to 17 - a representative sample of the 93 million children of their age living in these countries. Ninety-eight per cent of Bulgarian children attend classes, 46 per cent of them say school makes them unhappy. When asked about the future of Bulgaria, two thirds said they expected positive changes, and one third wanted to emigrate.