The following is the main body of text from Lord Butler's press conference today in which he launched his report on intelligence used in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

"Before describing the main chapters and our conclusions I highlight one or two points in the introduction.

"First, it has been the job of the Iraq Survey Group in Iraq, not ours, to discover whether there are Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The ISG has not reported yet. We have been in touch with them informally and we have given our broad judgment of what the outcome is likely to be, but it is they, not we, who are the authority on this.

"The second is that we have not commented on the performance of the intelligence machinery in other countries. In the United States there is a parallel Commission, as well as the Congressional Intelligence Committees.

"Third, while there is much material which we have not been able to include, we have prepared a Report which is published in full, including an unprecedented amount of intelligence material. There are no asterisks.

"Moreover, we believe that what we have been able to publish gives Parliament and the public a fair view of the issues we were asked to cover.

"Fourth, we think that a lot of confusion arises from the language used on this subject, and from the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in particular. So we have tried to avoid this phrase in the body of our Report, referring instead to the type of weapon by its name in each case. I will now try to stick to that in the rest of this presentation.

"Chapter 1 of the Report describes the nature and use of intelligence, including its pitfalls. We hope that readers will find this interesting. We feel that the character and limitations of intelligence need to be better understood and this is essential background for what is said in the rest of the Report.

"Chapters 2 and 3 are an account of the material we are able to publish on the role of intelligence in respect of the AQ Khan network, Libya, Iran, the proliferation activities of North Korea, and counter-terrorism; and the conclusions we draw from those. As I have said, we believe that these are creditable and impressive stories. We hope that they will give readers a glimpse of just a fraction of the work intelligence does in trying to make the world a safer place.

Iraq

"Now Iraq. We have two chapters on Iraq – one dealing with the role of intelligence in the period leading up to the Iraq war and the second with specific issues which have been the subject of public attention.

"In the general chapter on Iraq we start from the end of the first Gulf war and look at intelligence between then and the departure of the UN inspectors in 1998. We do so in order to examine how that intelligence influenced the assessments in the later period and our conclusions are set out in paras 207-9.

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