Republican presidential candidate Trump postpones Israel trip

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday postponed his trip to Israel amid a controversy over his proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the United States.

Trump, who has come under heavy criticism at home and abroad over his plan, said on Twitter that he would meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "at a later date after I become president of the U.S."

Trump told Fox News he postponed the trip because he did not want to put pressure on Netanyahu, who faced demands from Israeli politicians to call off the planned Dec. 28 meeting. Netanyahu had rejected Trump's proposal on Muslims but said he would still meet with him.

"I also did it because I'm in the midst of a very powerful campaign that's going very well and it (the trip) was not that easy to do," said Trump, a real estate mogul and former reality TV star who leads opinion polls in the Republican nominating race for the November 2016 election.

The decision came just days after Trump provoked an international uproar by calling for Muslims, including would-be immigrants, students and tourists, to be blocked from entering the country after last week's deadly shootings in California by two Muslims who authorities said were radicalised.

Trump's proposal has been condemned by an array of U.S. and global political leaders and human and civil rights groups, as well as many of Trump's Republican and Democratic rivals for the White House.

In Britain, a petition demanding that Trump be banned from visiting the United Kingdom had gained more than 440,000 signatures on Thursday and was still growing.

A Dubai real estate firm building a $6 billion golf complex with Trump, who has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, stripped the property of his name and image amid the uproar over the comments.

The firm, DAMAC Properties, initially said it would stand by Trump, even as another of the billionaire's Middle East partners, the Lifestyle chain of department stores, halted sales of his "Trump Home" line of lamps, mirrors and jewellery boxes in protest. A DAMAC spokesman declined to comment on why Trump's image was removed from a billboard outside the project site.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar of India, which has more than 170 million Muslims, likened the explosive potential of Trump's comments to "a nuclear bomb."

"In India, we have equal rights for everyone and we don't look toward communities with suspicion," he told a Washington news conference when asked about Trump. "Those who are radicalised, it's a different issue; we tackle them separately."

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, David Alexander and David Brunnstrom; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Jonathan Oatis)