AN ISLAMIC cleric whose Bolton bank account was frozen following an FBI investigation insists he is not the primary British contact of an alleged Spanish Al-Qaeda terror cell.

A court in Madrid was told Shiekh Abu Qatada was one of four main British contacts of Abu Dahdah, a man alleged to have been involved in plotting the September 11 atrocity.

Dahdah and seven others have been remanded in custody in Spain with prosecutors alleging they spoke in code about "aviation" two weeks before New York was hit by terrorists.

The phone taps were found in the Hamburg home of Mohammed Atta, one of the suicide pilots, and revealed a conversation between Dahdah and Shakur, an unknown caller.

On August 27, Shakur told Dahdah, the Syrian-born leader of the eight-man group: "In our classes we have entered the field of aviation and we have even cut the bird's throat."

The cryptic conversation led investigators to strongly believe the two men were plotting the hijacking which rocked the world two months ago.

Further investigation into Dahdah's affairs revealed he had visited Britain 20 times over the past four years and numbered Qatada as a main contact.

Judge Baltasar Garzon said Qatada -- who could be sent to prison under a set of new anti-terrorist laws announced by Home Secretary David Blunkett -- was top of the the contact list.

Qatada, however, said he could not recall having met Dahdah when he was shown a picture of him.

"I meet all kinds of people. I can't remember everyone. I don't know who this is," he said.

He dismissed Judge Garzon's accusations, saying "Spanish law was not very good".

Qatada is already under a wide-ranging investigation in Britain which has seen his Bolton bank account, held at the Deansgate branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, frozen by the UK Treasury.

The 40-year-old could be jailed without trial when Britain is officially declared to be in a state of public emergency in four weeks time.

But Qatada has always strongly denied having links with terrorism and he firmly pushes aside talk of any involvement with Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said: "I am just a cleric for Islam. People talk to me from all over the world. My phone number is known worldwide. People call me all the time about Islamic matters."

Qatada criticised Home Secretary David Blunkett's anti-terrorism bill as a "law against law" and said it would destroy civil liberties.

He said he did not fear being interned under the legislation and insisted he was prepared to stand up and face his accusers in court.

But he said he would not go to court in Jordan because "they are even worse than the Spanish courts".

"They are military courts, they'll beat me up," he added.

"This law takes the trust out of law when they remove the judge from the process. It's a law against law and they just made it for 20 people."

He declined to name the people he referred to.

Security sources indicate that he has £180,000 in total, an amount Qatada also denies, claiming to have just £1,205 instead.

He faxed his bank statement -- under the name of Omar Mahmood Othman, one of his nine aliases -- to the BEN last month.

Qatada now lives in Acton, West London. He has been living in Britain as a political refugee since 1993 and made Bolton his home for six months.

The Palestinian cleric continues to criticise American and British foreign policy, saying that the coalition members were too meddlesome.

He said: "As the old people say where I come from, if you see two fishes fighting in the sea you know the British are behind it."

He defended the role of British Muslims fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying: "They are trying to do what they want for their creed."

And he said that the role of British forces in Afghanistan would be a difficult one.

"History shows us that it is not a place that is easy to go out and easy to go in. Whoever goes in there, they're going to have a problem."

In February 2001, the cleric was detained during a series of raids on addresses in North and West London.

He was later released on bail but is still wanted by the authorities in Jordan, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence for a series of explosions.