THE Government would be legally justified in declaring war on Iraq because of the “combined effect” of three UN resolutions, the Attorney- General told MPs yesterday.

Bowing to pressure from MPs to set out the legal advice he had given to ministers, Lord Goldsmith, QC, said that the case rested on Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. All three had been adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the use of force, he told MPs.

His nine-point statement, a summary of the advice that he has given the Prime Minister, broke with the convention that law officers do not disclose their legal advice — or even that they have given it.

A spokeswoman for Lord Goldsmith said that he had acted “because of the enormous amount of public interest and importance of the issue”. The publication of the Attorney-General’s view while an issue was live was unprecedented, she added.

Lord Goldsmith argued that the combined effect of previous UN resolutions on Iraq dating back to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait allowed “the use of force for the express purpose of restoring international peace and security”. His case failed to persuade those who believe war would be illegal without the sanction of a new UN resolution.

Rabinder Singh, QC, who has written four legal opinions against the war on Iraq for the association Public Interest Lawyers, said: “This is not a legal opinion as ordinarily understood — it is simply a brief summary of the Attorney’s conclusions.”

The Attorney-General had not weighed the arguments nor shown how he had reached his conclusions, Mr Singh said. By contrast, Public Interest Lawyers had published some 90 pages of opinion and analysis.

In a nutshell, he said, the Attorney-General was arguing that “Resolution 678 was alive and well, even though it authorised a war in radically different circumstances from when Iraq was expelled from Kuwait. The Attorney does not argue that any later resolutions, such as 687 and 1441, authorise force; he just says 678 has been revived and continues today”.

Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former Labour Solicitor-General, agreed. “The Government has produced a resolution from ten years ago, ignoring all debate since. If the Security Council had wanted to authorise military action, it had every opportunity to say so and it never once did.”

But the Labour MP Ross Cranston, who was Solicitor-General from 1998 to 2001, said that Lord Goldsmith had set out a “clear and compelling case”. He said: “These arguments, which I also set out last week, are strong ones. He could also have added that the invasion of Kosovo was done without any further UN resolution.

“The justification for armed intervention lies in Iraqi non-compliance with the many UN Security Council resolutions since 1991.”

Iraq had an obligation to disarm and had failed to comply with that disarmament obligation, Mr Cranston said. “Not only has it failed, but in the language of the resolutions, it has committed a serious, clear or flagrant violation of its obligation to disarm. I believe that the use of force in enforcement action . . . can be legitimate in international law.”

Khawar Qureshi, an international law barrister, dismissed criticisms that the Attorney’s statement was thin. “He has made out a strong case . . . why say it in ten pages when nine bullet points will do?” Last night Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, released a document setting out the “legal background” to the Attorney’s statement. The detailed paper meets criticisms that Lord Goldsmith’s one-page answer failed to address the legal arguments.

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