The head of the United Nations' development agency said on Tuesday that the Taliban administration's U-turn last week on allowing girls to attend high school had created consternation among funders ahead of a key donor conference this week.
Diplomats and aid groups have warned that the shock move could make donors, already facing increased needs because of the Ukraine crisis, scale back their commitments.
"In the international community and amongst those who are the key funders of the humanitarian response...(this) has created great consternation and I would say in many incomprehension," Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, told a news conference in Kabul.
"The fact it has come at a very unfortunate time I think is beyond question," he said, referring to a key donor conference co-hosted by the United Kingdom, Germany and Qatar scheduled for Thursday.
He added that he told Taliban leaders during his visit to Kabul that they could count on assistance to help overcome any technical issues and barriers to opening schools, if they specified what help they needed.
"But if it were to signal a more fundamental reversal on this principle it would indeed I think create a crisis in the way the international community and the country could relate to one another," he said.
The United States already abruptly cancelled meetings with the Taliban in Doha that were set to address key economic issues, on Friday, in protest at the closure of girls' schools.
The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan later said he was hopeful there would be a change in coming days.
Thursday's pledging conference will aim to help the United Nations raise the $4.4 billion it says is needed to meet urgent needs in the country, whose economy has been plunged into crisis since the Taliban took over in August.
The U.N. and other humanitarian organisations have tried to provide food and other vital services to the population using humanitarian aid, which is aimed at being non-political and free from government interference.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
