A row over the status of the Taliban's Doha office shows no sign of abating as the militant group continues to display its flag, despite Afghan protests.
A BBC correspondent in the Qatari capital says the flag still flies, albeit on a shorter flagpole.
Last night US Secretary of State John Kerry told President Hamid Karzai the flag and nameplate would be removed.
Afghan officials rejected such moves as insufficient and voiced anger at Taliban claims about the office.
"It is a kind of Taliban establishment which we don't want," Muhammad Ismael Qasemyar, a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told the BBC.
Mr Qasemyar said negotiators objected to the statement made by the Taliban when the office was established, which had indicated the office would be used to represent the Taliban to the outside world.
He said that was against a previous agreement that it would only be used as a location for peace talks.
"Unless our demands are accepted, we are not going to take part in Qatar talks," he added.
Fraught processAnalysis
There is still simmering anger in Kabul at what has happened. Calling it the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", as if the Taliban was the legitimate government, is not the only problem.
President Karzai and members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council were given assurances by the Americans that this office was simply a place to start peace talks. Instead the Taliban presented it as a kind of diplomatic mission.
There was no recognition of President Karzai, or his Government or the constitution. Just a vague promise to talk to Afghans, "if necessary", when President Karzai's made clear he wants to be in charge.
Over time it may well be possible for the US to mend fences with Karzai. There have been plenty of spats resolved in the past. Afghanistan still needs America's help. But it may prove harder to get representatives of the Afghan Government to sit down with the Taliban.
Without that happening these peace talks will never come to much. The Taliban office in Doha was meant to be a solution to a problem. Now it's become a problem itself, seemingly yet another obstacle to peace.
But there is still hope. No one has yet said that the talks are dead.
Correspondents say that the Qatar office, which was opened on Tuesday, means the Taliban are no longer only a fighting group, but have a political arm too.
As part of a move to defuse tensions last night, Mr Kerry had told the Afghan president that the Taliban's office in Qatar was removing the flag, and that the sign designating the building as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan would be replaced by one saying Bureau of Peace Talks.
However this current dispute centres on the precise nature and powers of this office, and is just one indication of how fraught with difficulty this fledgling talks process will be.
On Wednesday Mr Karzai said Afghan negotiators would boycott the Qatar talks until "foreign powers" allowed the process to be run by Afghans. He also suspended security talks with the US on the American presence in Afghanistan after Nato leaves in 2014.
In a separate development, a Taliban spokesman in Doha has told the Associated Press news agency that the militants are ready to hand over a US soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five senior Taliban members held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
The first formal meeting between US and Taliban representatives is expected to take place in the coming days but it is now unclear what role Afghan officials will play in this.
The opening of the Taliban office happened on the same day that Nato handed over security for the whole of Afghanistan to the Afghan government for the first time since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
This was something analysts said was necessary before talks could become a realistic possibility. But the Taliban have long insisted on the complete withdrawal of foreign forces as a pre-condition to becoming part of a political settlement.
Nato's combat troops are due to leave the country by the end of 2014, but the US plans to station a few thousand forces after that as part of a bilateral security agreement.
Details about this are still to be agreed by Kabul and Washington.
Afghan peace attempts"Start Quote
End QuoteSome Western officials, with barely concealed frustration, often dismiss what they see as a prickly paranoia. But in this latest upset, the president's anger seemed justified."
The US met the Taliban secretly in 2011 in Qatar, but these would be the first open talks between them.
The White House has demanded - and the Taliban accepted - two preconditions for the talks: that the Taliban make a statement supporting a peace process, and that it oppose the use of Afghan soil to threaten other countries.
The BBC's Jonathan Beale, in Kabul, has said that the Afghan government clearly thinks one precondition should have been a commitment to talk to the Afghan government and to acknowledge the country's constitution.
For his part President Karzai opposes bilateral peace talks between the Taliban and the US and has long called on the Taliban to join an Afghan-led peace process.
In late 2008 he even offered to provide security for the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Omar, if he agreed to peace talks - but this was not incentive enough for the militants.
In 2010 the Afghan High Peace Council was established and tasked with contacting the Taliban and convincing them to join the peace process.
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