The man responsible for policing the City of London believes it it only a matter of time before terrorists launch an attack on iconic targets in the UK's financial heartland.

James Hart, Commissioner of the City of London Police, told the Financial Times that there had been "hostile reconnaissance" of the City on several occasions since the September 11 attacks on Manhattan and Washington in 2001.

He said: "Every successful terrorist group pre-surveys its target. There’s no doubt we’ve been subject to that surveillance and that sort of thing has been successfully disrupted."

Mr Hart's comments were published as the Government signed an agreement with Jordan allowing UK courts to deport Jordanians who incite or condone acts of terrorism in preaching or writing.

Under the bilateral accord - the first of ten planned with Middle Eastern and North African countries - Jordan would have to guarantee that a deportee would not be tortured or otherwise mistreated at home and would not face the death penalty.

The accords are part of the the Government's anti-terror plans in reaction to the four co-ordinated suicide bombings in London on July 7 in which 52 commuters were killed, and failed copycat attacks two weeks later.

The plans announced by Tony Blair last week also include powers to expel or exclude foreign nationals who incite terrorism, shut down mosques breeding fanaticism and blacklist extremist clerics, websites and bookshops.

One cleric who has come under fire for his sermons is Abu Qatada, a Jordanian-Palestinian, who has been convicted in absentia in Jordan for bomb plots there. Eighteen videotapes of his sermons were found in a flat in Germany used by three of the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The Government is expected to tighten immigration rules within days to ensure that another prominent radical cleric, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed will never be allowed back into Britain.

A new "exclusion order" will allow Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, to prevent any attempt by the leader of the al-Muhajiroun group to reenter Britain after he flew to Lebanon at the weekend for what he said was a holiday. The 47-year-old Syrian born cleric has lived in Britain for 19 years on state benefits as a refugee.

John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said yesterday that he had no power to deal with the cleric - who reportedly described the July 7 bombers as the "fantastic four" - if he had not been convicted of any offence.

But Michael Howard, the Tory leader and former Home Secretary, said today that Mr Clarke did not need any special measures to be able to exclude the Sheikh.

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