Butler report: Attorney General escapes censure.

ATTORNEY General Peter Goldsmith -- who was born in Liverpool -- emerged unscathed from the Butler Report, despite suggestions he would be the fall guy.

The heat was thought to be on the former Quarry Bank High School pupil, who delivered the controversial verdict that the war was legal even without a second United Nations resolution.

There were repeated rumours that Lord Goldsmith ``sat on the fence'' on the issue of the war's legality, before finally giving Tony Blair the all-clear just days before the invasion.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, resigned because she believed the war was illegal without a fresh UN vote.

Lord Butler devotes three pages of his 196-page report to Lord Goldsmith's advice, noting that the government accepted he would have ``the final word''.

But he does not pass judgment on the Attorney General's interpretation of international law, because it did not rest on the reliability of intelligence on WMD -- the reason for the inquiry. Lord Goldsmith, whose mother still lives in Aigburth, ruled the war was legal if the prime minister could prove Saddam had failed to disarm, in line with previous UN resolutions.

The Iraqi dictator had been given a ``final opportunity'' to disarm in UN resolution 1441, agreed unanimously in November 2002.