The Taleban movement has made one of its strongest ever criticisms of the United Nations. The movement's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, said the UN had undermined Islam. He said that what he called the excessive freedoms inherent in Western attitudes towards education led to adultery that could ruin the Moslem countries. Our Kabul correspondent, Alan Johnston, sent this report.

Mullah Omar said the UN had fallen under the sway of what he called the big colonialist powers. He accused it of using human rights questions to divert the majority of the world's Muslims from the proper path of Islam.

He strongly implied that the kind of education system advocated by the UN involved excessive freedoms. He said that such freedoms could destroy Islam because they promote adultery.

Mr Omar said that anyone wanting to enter into a dialogue with the Taleban had to do so within an Islamic framework. He said that the only real human rights were those set out in the Koran.

There has been widespread international condemnation of the Taleban's attitude towards women in general. Some of this has come from within the Islamic world and from the Taleban's opponents within Afghanistan.

Much of the criticism has focused on the Taleban's halting of female education.

The Taleban insists that females will be educated again once peace is restored to Afghanistan and once entirely sexually segregated university facilities have been created.

But the UN and the Taleban approach the whole issue of female education from completely opposing cultural positions.