BONN, June 13 (Reuter) - A German foundation's insistence on holding a controversial conference on Tibet sparked a diplomatic tussle between Bonn and Beijing on Thursday that put China's human rights record in the limelight again.

Both countries summoned the other's ambassador to discuss the flap after a miffed Beijing ordered the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, sponsor of the weekend seminar in Bonn, to halt its operations in China.

The four-day conference beginning in Bonn on Friday features an appearance by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing accuses of trying to split China and of fomenting anti-Chinese unrest in the Himalayan region.

"The Chinese reaction is inappropriate," Bonn Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said in a statement. "It casts a shadow over the good bilateral ties that both Germany and China want."

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said the foundation, closely linked to Kinkel's Free Democrats (FDP), had openly supported the "splittist activities" of the Dalai Lama and interfered in China's internal affairs.

"It ignores repeated representations by the Chinese side and insists on activities that interfere in China's internal affairs," he told a regular news briefing.

Opposition politicians in Bonn accused the German government of caving in to pressure from Beijing by withdrawing public financial support for the conference.

But they failed to push through a parliamentary resolution calling on Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition to restore the funding and to criticise China's human rights record.

"We cannot allow China to decide which events held on German territory the government will support and which it will not," Gerd Poppe, a deputy for the environmentalist Greens, told a debate in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.

He accused Kinkel of crumbling under Chinese pressure to distance Bonn from the symposium.

"This was a kowtow, and not the first, by the foreign minister before a dictatorial regime," Poppe said. "We cannot stand by and see the culture of another people destroyed."

Bundestag vice president Antje Vollmer, also a Green, called on Kinkel to cancel a planned trip to China in July after Beijing withdrew an invitation for a parliamentary human rights delegation that intended to visit Tibet.

But Kinkel vowed to proceed with his trip and said he would take up the issue of human rights with his hosts.

Bonn considers Tibet to be a part of China, which has ruled the region since the People's Liberation Army entered in 1950. But it has urged China to uphold Tibetans' human rights and seek a peaceful solution in talks with the Dalai Lama.

Foundation chairman Otto Lambsdorff, who is also honorary chairman of the FDP, Kohl's junior coalition partners, said he understood the government's decision to cut off funding but that the event would go ahead as planned in any event.

Some 260 participants from 53 countries are expected at the conference from Friday through Monday.