RE: a node child

<xsl:if test="childnodename">...</xsl:if>
<xsl:if test="@attributename">...</xsl:if>

If in the test statement you pass a name of a child or attribute it returns true if the child exists, otherwise it returns false.

To match all the persons with a "tel" child you can try:
<xsl:apply-templates select="person[tel]"/>

There is a deatailed explanation about this in any XSLT beginer's guide.
Sergiu

> Hi Andrew,
> first,thanks for the response.
> The example i gave was perhaps a bad example, but i want a 
> response in a
> more general case i.e once located on a node. How could we test the
> existence of a  given child node ?
> Thanks
> Abdessamad

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