Kampala- Uganda has protested to Germany over the arrest of a Rwandan government official accused of involvement in the assassination of a former Rwandan president, a Ugandan official said Friday.

Rose Kabuye, chief of protocol to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was arrested in Frankfurt Sunday on a French warrant.

She is suspected of having been involved in the assassination of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana - an act that sparked the 1994 genocide of up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"We have sent a protest note to the Germany embassy here," Uganda's permanent secretary in the foreign ministry, James Mugume, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "The arrest was an arbitrary violation of the sovereignty of the country."

The arrest of Kabuye has sparked widespread anger in Rwanda.

Rwanda on Tuesday expelled the German ambassador to Kigali and recalled its own ambassador from Berlin for consultations.

Thousands of Rwandans earlier marched on the German embassy and the offices of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Kigali. Protestors also demonstrated against France.

A French magistrate suspects Kabuye and eight other Kagame staff of complicity in the death of Habyarimana. Kabuye is the first to be arrested.

The Hutu government accused Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of shooting down Habyarimana's plane on May 6, 1994, and then embarked on the genocide.

The RPF says that the Hutus shot down the plane themselves to provide an excuse for massacring Tutsis.

Rwanda is planning to indict French military and political officials for allegedly helping to plan and execute the genocide.

Uganda backed the RPF during its guerilla war against Habyarimana's government before the rebels captured power and brought the genocide to an end. (dpa)