Berlin - A senior Rwandan official, Rose Kabuye, who has been arrested in Germany on a European warrant, has agreed to be extradited to France, a justice official said Monday in Frankfurt.

Kabuye, 47, is chief of protocol to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and a leading member of his Rwandan Patriotic Front.

After her Sunday detention when she landed in Frankfurt, Rwandan authorities immediately summoned the German ambassador in Kigali to protest.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Rosemary Museminali told BBC radio on Monday that the arrest of Kabuye was "illegal and flawed" and Kabuye had diplomatic immunity. "We did not think they had any right or any base to arrest her," she was quoted saying.

German public prosecutor Hildegard Becker-Toussaint said in Frankfurt that Kabuye had denied to a German magistrate the two accusations of murder and membership in a terrorist association, but agreed to fast-track extradition.

Kabuye, formerly mayor of Kigali, was remanded to a female prison until the final decision by Frankfurt superior court judges in the next few days.

She has been wanted for questioning in France since November 2006 in connection with the April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, which triggered a frenzy of genocidal killing by his Hutu supporters.

Germany arrested her under a European arrest warrant.

Kabuye had arrived using her ordinary Rwandan passport, apparently to prepare the ground for a private visit by Kagame to Germany, German officials said. She did not have diplomatic travel documents.

She had previously visited Berlin in April, when Kagame was paying an official visit, but in Germany's view enjoyed diplomatic immunity from arrest on that occasion as part of his delegation.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with France after the warrant was issued by magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere.

Diplomatic sources in Berlin said Germany had warned Kigali earlier this month more than once that it would arrest Kabuye under the warrant if she arrived in Frankfurt. The BBC quoted Museminali saying Rwanda had been aware of warnings.

Bruguiere issued warrants in 2006 for the arrest of nine Kagame staff and recommended that a UN tribunal on genocide in Rwanda investigate Kagame himself.

Habyarimana was in a plane that was shot down as it was returning to Rwanda in 1994, triggering months of genocidal bloodletting by radicals from his Hutu ethnic group in the African nation.

In summer this year, Rwandan authorities issued an investigative report that accused France of assisting the genocide in 1994.

It claimed France trained Hutu militiamen who subsequently killed 800,000 of the Tutsi ethnic group and Hutu moderates in the bloodbath.

Rwanda has said it will seek to have French politicians hauled before the UN tribunal. Foreign Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said at the time, "This is not a matter of revenge, but of bringing out the truth."

French commentators rejected the report as a bid to divert attention from the suspicions against Kagame.

Berlin did not confirm the Rwandan protest. The German Foreign Ministry simply said it was "in contact with the Rwandan authorities." (dpa)