By Scott Hillis

BEIJING, April 18 (Reuter) - Chinese Vice Premier Zhu Rongji has called off a visit to the Netherlands and three other European nations as a mark of anger at a Western attempt to censure Beijing on human rights, diplomats said on Friday.

Zhu, one of seven members of China's powerful Politburo standing committee and the man in charge of China's economy, had been due to visit the Netherlands, as well as Ireland, Austria and Luxembourg in late May, diplomats said.

China's Foreign Ministry called in the Dutch ambassador and senior diplomats of the other three countries on Thursday to notify them of the decision to postpone Zhu's trip, they said.

Senior diplomats of the three other countries that Zhu planned to visit were also called into the Foreign Ministry on Thursday and notified that since Zhu would not be visiting the Netherlands, the rest of his trip had also been postponed.

"We were told that... because of the efforts of the Netherlands to try to obtain EU (European Union) co-sponsorship of the United Nations resolution to censure China's human rights record this had damaged relations with the Netherlands," said a diplomat of one of the other three countries.

The Foreign Ministry expressed Beijing's dissatisfaction at the support of all four countries for the resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, another diplomat said.

However, Beijing made clear the move was directed at the Netherlands, which officially co-sponsored the resolution, and not at the the three other countries, which supported the motion but withheld official sponsorship, the diplomat said.

"They said they had regrettably to postpone the visit to the other countries for logistical reasons," the first diplomat said.

China rallied strong support from Third World countries at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva on Tuesday and sank a Western resolution criticising its human rights record and treatment of Tibet.

Despite heavy lobbying, it was the seventh year since 1990 that Western countries failed to achieve even a vote on the issue in the 53-member body.

Denmark was the most active co-sponsor of the resolution, along with the Netherlands and the United States.

China has already given Denmark and the Netherlands a diplomatic slap on the wrist by postponing planned visits by their officials to China.

The United States has accused the commission of failing the people of China by not voting on the resolution.

A total of 27 countries supported China's "no action" motion with 17 opposing and nine abstaining, sinking the resolution.

The U.S. State Department panned European and other countries that refused to support the resolution and said China had scored only a "Pyrrhic victory" by getting the commission to adopt the no-action motion on the resolution.

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan and Spain all refrained from officially co-sponsoring the resolution.