The Rwandan president today threatened to arrest French nationals if France proceeds with the indictment of one of his aides.

President Paul Kagame's chief of protocol was arrested on Sunday in Germany on a warrant from France, where she is wanted in connection with the attack on the plane of a former Rwandan president that touched off Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Kagame told reporters in Geneva: "[If] you indict our people, we indict your people."

Rwanda has already ordered the German ambassador to leave the country and recalled its envoy in Berlin after the arrest of Rose Kabuye at Frankfurt airport.

Kabuye, Rwanda's director of state protocol, was arrested by German police acting on a 2006 international warrant issued for her and eight other Rwandans for alleged complicity in the 1994 aircraft attack.

The Rwandan government said it was not severing diplomatic ties with Germany and that full relations would be restored once the controversy over Kabuye's arrest is resolved.

Kagame visited Kabuye yesterday in Germany to reassure her of his support ahead of her possible trial in France. France wants to question Kabuye over the plane crash that killed then-president Juvenal Habyarimana.

His plane was hit by a missile and his death was the prelude to a rampage in which Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and some moderate Hutus. Kagame was the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front that defeated the government's Hutu militias to end the genocide.

Kabuye was in Frankfurt to prepare for a visit by Kagame who is currently on a tour of Europe. The president said the arrest was unacceptable and would have implications for his country's relationship with France and Germany.

Germany took a leading role in helping Rwanda rebuild after the genocide. Ties between France and Rwanda have been strained since the warrants were issued and hundreds of people, including Kabuye's husband, protested outside the German embassy in Kigali yesterday.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin said German officials had been obliged to arrest Kabuye. Her lawyer said she was willing to go before a French judge.

"Rwanda or Rose should be able to fight for their right, and we challenge the case as whether in Germany or in France or anywhere else," Kagame told reporters after visiting Kabuye in prison.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with Paris in November 2006 because of the warrants. Kigali, for its part, has accused French officials of involvement in the genocide, a charge France denies. Although Rwanda was a Belgian colony until independence in 1962, France kept close links with the government there from 1975 to 1994, giving financial and military support.

The Rwandan government said Kabuye was travelling on official government business when she was arrested. Rwanda's information ministry said Berlin had warned Kabuye against travelling to Germany because of the arrest warrant but that she had travelled there and to other European countries earlier in the year without incident.

The timing may also have been influenced by the upheaval in neighbouring Congo . Rwanda is under pressure over its ties to the Tutsi rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, who has been accused of war crimes as he seized swaths of eastern Congo in recent weeks. France has been particularly vocal in its criticism and in proposing European military intervention.