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No New Charges in British Phone-Hacking Case

The inquiry had been prompted by an article in The New York Times Magazine in September that cited former News of the World journalists saying that Mr. Coulson, during his time as editor, had encouraged reporters to eavesdrop on messages belonging to public personalities.

Mr. Coulson, who carries broad powers as a member of Mr. Cameron’s inner policy circle, has denied the charges, and prosecutors said Friday that the witnesses they had interviewed “either refused to cooperate with the police investigation, provided short statements which did not advance matters or denied any knowledge of wrongdoing.”

The police said Friday that four of the witnesses had been interviewed “under caution,” meaning that any statement they made could be used against them in a possible prosecution, lawyers say. Other witnesses had been interviewed, the police said, without clarifying how many. Mr. Coulson was question by investigators last month.

Giving evidence in an unrelated case on Friday, Mr. Coulson reiterated his innocence, saying, “I had absolutely no knowledge of it. I certainly didn’t instruct anyone to do anything at the time or anything else which was untoward.”

Mr. Coulson was testifying as a witness in a separate case against Tommy Sheridan, a politician from Scotland, who faces perjury charges related to a libel case against The News of the World, which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire.

In the trial, it was alleged that during Mr. Coulson’s tenure as editor he had encouraged numerous reporters to make use of a private investigator to secure private phone material and that he asked Clive Goodman, a reporter, “to take the blame for the sake of the paper.”

After a police investigation, Mr. Goodman, The News of the World’s royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator, were jailed in 2007. They pleaded guilty to illegally intercepting the telephone voice mail messages of Prince William and Prince Harry and their aides.

At the time, Mr. Coulson, who was appointed editor of The News of the World in 2003, said that he had no knowledge of the hacking and that it was an isolated case, but resigned from the paper in January 2007 after the two men were jailed.

Since then, The Guardian printed an article saying that hundreds of people might have been singled out by The News of the World and provided details about some of them, including Gordon Taylor, former chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, who reached a settlement of £700,000, or about $1.1 million, with The News of the World over the hacking of his cellphone.

This year, a leading public relations executive, Max Clifford, who had brought a separate lawsuit, reached his own agreement with The News of the World. Several other civil cases were also initiated, through which more details of phone-hacking allegations might still emerge.

The Times Magazine article led British prosecutors to investigate again whether Mr. Coulson had encouraged such activities at The News of the World and whether the practice was widespread, not just carried out by Mr. Goodman.

In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said that the police had investigated the allegations of Sean Hoare, one of the journalists who figured prominently in the magazine story, interviewing him and others, but that they had either refused to cooperate or gave perfunctory statements.

“Against that background, there is no admissible evidence upon which” the Crown Prosecution Service “could properly advise the police to bring criminal charges,” the statement said.

The crown prosecution said that if additional information came to the fore, it would be taken into account. In that instance, prosecutors said, a joint panel would be convened of officials from the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service that would judge any further developments in the case.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions for the Crown Prosecution Service, said that “a criminal prosecution can only take place if those making allegations of wrongdoing are prepared to cooperate with a criminal investigation and to provide admissible evidence of the wrongdoing they allege.”

For Mr. Cameron, whose coalition government is already under siege because of its move to increase fees for university students, the decision represented a small measure of relief — easing the pressure on one of his more trusted advisers.

Paul Farrelly, an opposition member of Parliament, said, “There are still ongoing parliamentary investigations into this affair.”

Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.