AMERICA’S top-ranking military commander said yesterday “it would be premature for me to judge” the outcome of a Pentagon investigation into the killing of as many as a dozen Iraqi civilians by marines.

US President George W Bush is expected to call today for Republicans and Unionists to make compromises to strike a deal to get the Good Friday Agreement back on track.

Thousands of protesters marched on George Bush and Tony Blair’s war summit near Belfast tonight and declared: “We want nothing to do with the Iraqi massacre.”