everything is. i'm sorry is a big issue. humanitarian aid now enters the syrian city of softer government forces push beyond fighters from their strongholds but locals report that the rebels are still in the area and are still killing. the prime minister and presidential hopeful vladimir putin says an energized helps the government respond to the public mood but he rejects calls for an early parliamentary election. plus the majority of e.u. nations sign a long delayed deal to make economic discipline compulsory the critics fear unrealistic expectations will hit the struggling nations.

a very warm welcome to you from all of us here at r.t. moscow i'm showing syrian government forces if i allowed an aid convoy to enter the city of homs after capturing the rebel stronghold of baba amr now this follows a call from the u.n. security council to allow immediate humanitarian access to the worst affected areas and emotion supported by russia and china. spoke to one resident of the perceived city who gave an eyewitness account of what she described as atrocities committed while the rebels were in control. international red cross and surrender of crescent has reached it's brought food water and medical supplies to the city that suffered from an almost month old siege humanitarian agencies are also expected to create injured from the area many people have been killed in homes as well their bodies have never been taken away and that will be another part of their mission which

used to be one of the opposition's main strongholds here in syria is now under the government's control local media reports that in the tunnels underneath homes the army has discovered the fighters based out of command and control center packed with electronics weapons and explosives the reports also say that they've found hundreds of bodies with multiple injuries and torture marks the situation on the ground still remains three mattick i was killed infrastructure has been badly damaged homes there is no water no electricity and no food the wall coverage and landslide has also been badly damaged after many attempts were finally managed to speak by phone with homes for us didn't the woman has called herself the leader without giving us her last name she has said that local residents are afraid to leave their houses. and revolutionaries are real bandits they can shoot in the back of the queue people rob house one can be shot dead for no reason we are afraid to

go to the country and our car can be stopped and we can be sure the queue both young and on the people from their homes and chop them into pieces put them in plastic bags and then throw them out she has also said that while retreating from baba amr area the rebels have moved to another neighborhood in homes known as the media and they've killed many people there and most most of them are christian families. i mean civilians are tired of syrians want peace and they love. the syrian soldiers who protect us are being killed every day we've heard mercenaries from france tunisia. we don't go anywhere. israel freed of snipers people like. shortly after the rebels was drole one of the syrian main opposition groups formed a military council to organize the nobs resistance and provide rebels with more weapons the fact that just shows and proves how diplomats rise the conflict in

syria has become recently as the country is very close to a civil war that is more a financial reporting verbal and meantime look at a recruiter over just came back from homs so she witnessed a scene of chaos and carnage in the water on city. i spent nine days in homs with the syrian red crescent and saw killing and bloodshed i saw with my own eyes blood in corpses especially at a place called rust on there i saw a lot of lebanese mercenaries a city of homs itself is divided into with regime supporters are known side and the islamist opposition on the other i talk to members of the syrian army who told me about turn all search it into between homes and lebanon which are used by mercenaries who were paid a lot of money to fight the army much of the fault of the bloodshed rest of your position the wall so cause casualties as they fire on government forces and areas

but the people themselves they just want to be left alone and not be killed by either side. door for more the situation in and around syria let's not talk to ashwin burner protocol order for the conflicts forum in beirut for us. both good to see you thanks for joining us on our to today we've heard reports of french officers being detained in the homes at a local we've managed to contact spoke of foreign fighters on the ground do you think overall covert operations already underway in syria. i think yeah there's been a lot of reports for the last few months about covert operations i'm seeing press reports of french and other. agents from the region some of the gulf countries and turkish intelligence officers being arrested but these are press reports so i'm not really able to confirm whether

they're true or not a little let's talk about the move in the motion here for for peace talks in the battle stricken area by the u.n. arab league envoy to syria kofi annan who's calling for a dialogue and the voices against escalating violence are now growing louder as we can see in recent reports did you think that a feat of rebels in the homes has discouraged the hawkish opposition supporters of broad. i think so i think there's a growing recognition that some of the very fundamentalist islamist groups who probably make up about thirty percent of the armed insurgents but they've been guilty of as much sort of. terrible action. some of the accusations against the syrian army and i just saw your clip interviewing a resident from homs who said that they carried out charitable atrocities and these have been documented in various reports but on both sides i think what's important

to remember is that humps really since last march april has been the scene of you know vicious sectarian conflict and the leading newspaper. last april wrote an article and they they wrote that there was the killing of a. senior military officer with his children and his nephew and they weren't able to verify even at that stage last april who actually had killed this person and there were rumors rumors on both sides and counter rumors and allegations and it shows that it's very difficult to know what's happening in a war situation like that of essentially that's guerilla warfare it's very difficult and the mainstream media of course presents this is a very one sided attack of security forces on innocent civilians i think probably any way of two car bombings first in the last person and then the leftovers much more recognition that you know there are there are some of the

islamist fundamentalists forces particularly the turks series for who this is not a fight for democracy or greater political and civil rights and in syria this is a fight to establish a fundamentalist hardline only regime and i think you're going fight here in a sort of dropped you i don't. i do apologize but you know you can talk about the difficulty of confirming the conflicting reports that are coming out of syria but moments ago you mentioned the embattled president assad i want to draw attention to him now because most u.n. security council members have condemned the humanitarian situation in syria and now today we were reporting the government appears to be cooperating with the red cross allowing humanitarian aid to get into homs do you think in any way that could actually help ease the pressure on assad at this point at this point i think so but i think again we need to be careful of some of the mainstream media coverage in

fact the i.c.r.c. and its local the syrian red crescent have been distributing humanitarian aid to medical supplies water for some days and how much. and for example they did get ambulances through to. take the injured journalists out of homs and it was actually the free syrian army who refused to let the journalists leave so i think we need to be quite careful that you know suddenly this has been allowed by by the syrian government there is in fact this is been going on for some time and there are there are a lot of on the ground reports including from al-jazeera who have confirmed that it was actually the free syrian army who stopped ambulances going in to to evacuate injured syrian civilians and. insurgents but also foreign journalists who were there. when i was reported this project coordinator for the conflicts forum in beirut thanks for coming on r.t. today thank you you thank. all right still to come on the program here in our new

hope for an old hopeful the e.u. recognizes serbia as a candidate for membership as the government roll great promises a bright prosperous but some say realistic future for the country. but let me put in has called or any attempts to arm the syrian opposition unacceptable insisting it would undermine the peace efforts and the prime minister and presidential hopeful was speaking with members of the foreign media ahead of sunday's presidential vote his attitude to work most opponents and of russia's foreign relations all among the issues that he had to question and face answers on so i got a pretty good offer now has the latest on this. of course this was a meeting with. foreign journalists so international affairs were discussed and speaking about syria has called on the international community to pressure the syrian opposition into holding peaceful dialogue with assad's regime stressing that

it's taking sides in this conflict is not a way to resolve it and was going to push on is also said and called on the international community not to supply weapons to the syrian rebels saying that this only leads to more bloodshed and sets back any possible peaceful dialogue between the authorities and the opposition they're speaking about to be a relations with the united states the prime minister has said that the research has worked economically wise but when it comes to washington supplants for the anti missile defense system in europe the reset has failed list on which one of the sides wants to become totally invincible but this undermines the strategic balance of forces in the world we think it's highly dangerous the strategic balance has let us avoid global conflicts since the second world war when a country begins to think it's invincible to a retaliation strike from another country it leads to a lot of conflicts and aggressive behavior and it's not just because america is an

aggressive country but because this is the way life is the presidential poll said to take place as soon as this sunday and of course in taking court and then actually the political situation in russia took center stage. in a session with foreign journalists especially in light of the numerous opposition rallies which have been seeking place across the entire country since the parliamentary election in december and what the reports in said that he's taken more of the opposition's demands on board actually describing the entire protest movement as a positive thing for the country was sort of energizes the authorities but it was it has also commented on one of the opposition ski. demands which is a whole new early parliamentary elections following accusations of fraud during december and the prime minister has completely ruled out holding a new election saying that. is determined strictly by legislation.

reporting a little bit later in the program so you know we've got more on the election process here russia. which is mostly the logs on the trickle of a very modern away use of attracting votes the internet becomes the arena in the battle for hearts and minds. and i with less than two days now before the polls open takes a closer look at truly what's at stake. such a person is relatively apathetic partly because they think there isn't much of a real choice secondly because they think. he's going to win. two so i think there's going to be probably even if he wins and even if even if he wins it's rigged i mean it seems to me that kind of argument caves in on itself

erica if i can go to you i mean it's just hard for the outside world to understand that like to me a building is popular. well there's something very embarrassing for the journalist we've heard a lot in the western press about how putin was losing his popularity how all the facebook protests in moscow in the demonstrations meant that the regime was on its way out and of course when the polls which i can't give any numbers on but the polls have certainly shown a very substantial rise and that mr putin is going to sweep to victory in the first round. the full episode across or coming your way either fifteen thirty g.m.t. here or see the months of talks confrontations are history as a disunited was probably signed a watered down fiscal pact the agreement is supposed to enforce tough new budget

rules but britain and the czech republic found the idea too much to take on a test are sillier now has more on the packets future. what's next is the contracting parties will have to present this treaty to their own parliaments and have it ratified what is needed for the street to come into effect are twelve years old now ratifications for it's going to be implemented part of the contracting parties now twenty five of the twenty seven have a sidebar to this treaty what they are saying that this is a positive political statement that the euro is the currency of the european you here on one hand it could be seen as a political statement on the other hand critics will see that two countries and did not want to sign this treaty the u.k. and the czech republic the u.k. has been very critical from the very start and you have ireland who also hold a referendum on the treaty so a while the leaders here are widely expecting the treaty to be ratified with the question is how smoothly will it go through this process i want to observe implementation the question is really this is speaking can this countries actually

implemented needed those targets set out by this pact realistically only germany luxembourg and finland agree meet these targets and the rest are very having very little room to maneuver so while leaders here are saying that they're out of a crisis mode really it is very difficult to say that this in fact solves europe's crisis now here is more on that. it's been talked about for months claimed as a solution to europe's crisis. compact prescribe partly new for after another two day summit this fiscal stability compact is signed sealed and delivered . most e.u. leaders have agreed to give it to go ahead and it's expected to be ratified by at least twelve years of nations this pact comes with tight budgetary rules that must be strictly adhered to or else face automatic sanctions member states must maintain a balanced budget or have a surplus keep a budget deficit of three percent or less and trying to balance

a budget rule of national legislation with one year preferred we would be in the constitution if the. targets are not met a guilty nation could be brought to the european court of justice and be obliged to make penalty payments the reins of strict budgetary oversight will be in brussels hands now we've in europe in brussels we've got our first saw and there's a budget saw and it's going to police all the bridges all the member states and these member states will over and see in the field of budgetary policy. what is the population going to accept this. a population that's already been forced to accept want tougher security measure after another good economist and also if you are doing if you were to go towards crisis and everybody is no tackling big business and if. expenses everywhere then you crush it with the bodies constraining nobody's going to growth is the point of this truth is

a continuation of the liberal orthodoxy so we are exactly going back to what we have done in the last fifteen years. in the us e.u. leaders see the budgetary discipline the school security pact is expected to bring as a step closer to solving the eurozone structural imbalances and help crisis hit countries ease their way out of their predicament but it's a one size fits all approach that has some worried about the impact it could have on healthier economies improved lead to huge fiscal consolidation bias so even those countries to cover your fiscal situation. with their fiscal accounts can depress coming. at a time and then banks face problems and they do in the time you want to and not a desirable scenario where the new buzzwords are growth and employment just are still your r t brussels. the eurozone finance ministers have also once again

delayed a greece's second bailout but things must now wait another week pending the approval of the scrum told private investors who have now lost up to seventy percent of their investments in greek bonds nigel farage an m.e.p. and leader of the u.k. independence party believes greece is now well and truly on the brink no one doubts that tough decisions need to be taken in greece you know that's obvious but you've got to have some stimulus as well and the only way that will happen is by leaving the euro just remember three weeks ago there were eighty thousand people storming the barricades a big republican trying to get in and we saw five thousand armed police keeping them out we're seeing evidence of this in spain in portugal i mean come on we saw an arab spring last year was the absolute no reason why similar things can't happen in southern europe it is difficult enough to stomach tough austerity measures tough government if it's your own elected government but to be dictated to by angela

merkel herman van ryn point mr burroughs is for millions of people just totally unacceptable in a moment it's katie with the markets but for now a little more than a decade since the nato bombs fell on its cities serbia has now been given the symbolic title of each new member cabinet but the largely ceremonial affair is seen as a reward for belgrade's normalizing of relations with the breakaway region of cars of zero which the country sees as its own but no budget knowledge and expert on serbian history says that only the e.u. benefits from the entire accession process. but they will not get any sort of. tribute needed bandages and even if it did it doesn't have much of an economy to take advantage of them anymore because over the past four years under a militant think through your government assuming economy it's pretty much been dismantled completely it's lost has pretty much been forced to surrender its claims and problems of course

a lot of it is currently down on paper it is being forced to basically subordinate its own policy to brussels and to a lesser extent washington and now i've heard it there is talk from brussels about the necessity for serbia to have all russia's most favored nation status if we treat between its and only structures government supporters interviewed for which we actually speak of the e.u. and you see i don't think anybody in serbia honestly expects their problems to be resolved by joining the e.u. especially after seeing rights and speed increase in number although that started about the euro. this is our theme slogans promises and pledges are the usual attributes of any presidential campaign of this year's race and russia has seen some brand new creative weapons on leash the internet has become one of the major battlegrounds or the content can be scandalous and not entirely innocent parties you caught that i got to and i looked at the online arsenal.

there is been a lot of singing dancing drawing and even cooking this election season as presidential campaigns go it's been hot and creative. here. if you have a position is a fourth hard in the online wars from rapping and slating to put in inventive tandem. not so innocent video fakes. charges against putin include embezzlement financial fraud and abuse of office. compactor the aggressive anti crowd in campaigning the pro putting videos can seem a little toothless. wow. wow

wow. if you believe that if our lives. now get. the topic of ukraine not paying for russian gas present this video has been made on the kremlin's orders otherwise i don't understand who would be interested in spending money on this but even for putin is a useless way to have someone made up their mind to vote for putin as their free won't make them any firmer in their decision on the contrary if they're against putin their free will made them change their mind this prominent journalist and blogger believes it's not only losing the war of creativity other candidates look desperate to. avoid the latter students sound as if we was where bush to eat my horse seeable not just only to see that this idiot. no it was right before. me all the candidates videos are annoying

it seems that they hired the cheapest directors to film this fast food horrible quality and this only proves one thesis about these elections none of the candidates are striving for a victory one is the outspoken leader anyway and the others think of this campaign as a dull ritual they have to go through which they don't really want to spend too much money on. so what the real candidates barely putting in an ad for it supporters or opponents are taking the lead using the internet as a free medium to play a bigger chill politics however when we go offline career to be a set aside giving way to hear images i want to just camera angles and easily understood slogans tried and tested method which has badly secured votes for several generations of politicians in this country. if there had been five

candidates breathing down each other's necks then every creative video could win votes from the other in our case there is a firm core of putting supporters thirty thirty five percent which is very hard to shake and i cannot imagine what put in or his office could do in the last few days before the election to lose these votes funny videos won't change anything be alluring a small percentage of undecideds but some are willing to do whatever it takes to win over those voters right to the last minute. recess pointed. to. the happening right. before. the word. good girl. take her away. record your upgrade to the camera roll. we have sound. good now you get the next one here you can see the gradual r t.

what about if you were check at the markets with katie this hour hello to you you're the person who's this go tell us how the russian markets to. yet indeed go so far so good it's march and so far this year the russian markets have soared twenty four percent that's since december which makes it the world's best performing stock market so far this year the ruble is also enjoying gains close to a six month high so that's the help us markets are doing this hour take a look at the figures and this hour it is indeed a mixed picture as you can see the r.t.s. there over a percent down the my state fair in better point four percent in positive territory with check out the individual prices enough to telecom operator was telecom it's on the top performers following news of an acquisition deal ross left is now down the company's net profit rose to almost eleven billion dollars last year i b t v find has slipped into the red as a company is out for its buyback program which starts on the twelfth of march as

staying with the markets many analysts say we will see a rally after the elections this weekend but earlier we spoke to hawk sunshine from i have seen metro he said although we might see around eight it will not be based soley on who becomes president. the rally could be quite significant next week but it really depends on the global background we see quite a significant rally in the russian market over the last week or two i think it would be a mistake to say that this rally was of the last couple of weeks as because of increase in carbon it's about elections that could be part of that but significant increase in the world prices also played a very material. so kind of all that see how the prices are doing at this hour as you can see both are indeed down the lights point nine percent down to brant where we are over a sense in negative territory ok moving on we'll take a look at the european markets they're actually having for. their down it's not

looking too good friday afternoon we'll see if the parties will get started get themselves back on this move on to the u.s. and see how they closed yesterday but there could be opening up just found just over an hour's time actually now stock futures are falling so it might not be such a positive day i should say yesterday are they did rather well though the dow jones just imposed territory the nasdaq point seven percent up and let's check out the exchange rates and show way the dollar edging higher among the major rivals and the year that the ruble is mixed against the main occurrences is lower against the greenback and higher against european currencies swapping back next hour more market needs here on r.t. stay with us headlines.

wealthy british style fund raising is not on.