Home Secretary Theresa May will be forced to give a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon to explain to MPs the latest delay in the decade-long effort to deport terror suspect Abu Qatada.
May will respond to an urgent question from shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper after the radical cleric's lawyers lodged an appeal with Europe's human rights court on Tuesday, effectively putting moves to return him to stand trial in his native Jordan on hold.
In a written statement to the Commons this morning, the home secretary said the government was "clear" that Qatada has "no right to refer the case to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights" (ECHR), as the three-month deadline to do so lapsed at midnight on Monday.
But the issue was mired in confusion, after the court refused to confirm that the Home Office had calculated the deadline correctly.
In her statement, May confirmed that the Government has written to the ECHR to argue that Qatada's application should be rejected because it is out of time and the case should instead be heard by the UK's Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac).
Until the Grand Chamber makes its decision, Mrs May said "the deportation process and any potential Siac appeal is put on hold".
But she added: "We will resume the process as soon as the injunction is lifted. In the meantime, we will continue to build our case, based on the assurances and information we have received from the Jordanian government.
"Abu Qatada remains in detention, and the Government will resist vigorously any application he might make to be released on bail.
"As I said in the House of Commons on Tuesday, despite the progress we have made, the process of deporting Abu Qatada is likely to take many months.
"That he has sought to delay that process by applying for a referral to the Grand Chamber after the deadline had passed and after he had heard our case in Siac is evidence of the strength of our arguments and the likelihood of our eventual success in removing him from Britain for good."
The row comes as justice secretary Ken Clarke hosts talks on reforming the Strasbourg-based court with justice ministers from the other 46 member nations of the Council of Europe in Brighton.
He wants to improve its efficiency, reduce the backlog of some 150,000 cases and the number of cases it hears, and increase the role of nation states in protecting human rights.
Clarke said he did not regard the latest delay in the Qatada case as a "big deal" and was "sure the Home Office lawyers will sort it out".
"This isn't unusual in legal proceedings. I'm quite confident the Home Office will sort it out, I'm leaving it to them, they are arguing the point," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"I'm not party and I'm still not party to the Home Office legal advice. If I was the Home Secretary, I would probably be confident it was right.
"I know what the home secretary has said. It seems to me quite sound and she could well be proved right.
"I'm not quite sure what the big deal is either, because she did say that this whole thing was going to take some months in any event before this whole thing could be resolved. The key thing is when do we get the decision which we want, which is that he should be deported to Jordan to stand trial in a case where torture has not been used to get the evidence?"
Qatada, who is said to have "wide and high-level support" among extremists, was convicted in Jordan in his absence of involvement with terror attacks in 1998 and now faces a retrial in his home country.
He also featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the September 11 bombers.
Since 2001, when fears of the domestic terror threat rose in the aftermath of the attacks, he has challenged, and ultimately thwarted, every attempt by the Government to detain and deport him.