BONN -- Germany's Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel was under fire from all but his closest allies Monday as commentators, academics and diplomats joined a chorus criticizing his handling of an aborted conference on Islam.


Kinkel abruptly postponed the German government-sponsored conference, "Europe and the Islamic World," after parliament demanded Friday that Kinkel's invitation to Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati to attend the conference be withdrawn.


The deputies were outraged by Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's remark that the murder of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was "divine revenge" for last month's killing of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shqaqi in Malta.


The deputies' vote was a direct hit at Kinkel, who has advocated holding a "critical dialogue" with Iran and who had defended Velayati's invitation to the Nov. 15 -16 conference.


But Kinkel's postponement of the conference -- which ministers from Bosnia, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Pakistan had also been set to attend -- drew further fire from opposition deputies who said Kinkel had missed the point by eliminating a chance for a dialogue with other Islamic countries.


Experts on the Moslem world, which Kinkel wanted to woo with the conference, said his decision to postpone the conference had backfired badly.


"We have slapped the moderate Islamic states in the face," said Gernot Rotter, a Hamburg University orientalist. "They must think we have made Velayati into an Islamic Pope."


"It is very important to talk with liberal and moderate forces in the Islamic world," Rotter told German Radio.


Kinkel had defied calls for his resignation over the weekend, but the honorary chairman of his Free Democratic Party publicly backed Kinkel on Monday.