(Updates with German prosecutor comments in paras 3-4 and 20)

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN, Nov 10 (Reuters) - A Rwandan official wanted for questioning over the death of a former Rwandan president will be extradited from Germany to France within weeks, Berlin said on Monday, drawing protests in Rwanda's capital Kigali.

Rose Kabuye, director general of state protocol, was arrested at a Frankfurt airport on Sunday on an international warrant issued by France in 2006 for her and eight other associates of current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

"She is accused of having participated in the 1994 shooting down of the plane of the Rwandan President," a state prosecutor in Hesse, Hildegard Becker-Toussaint, told Reuters.

"She allegedly participated in the planning and execution of that. This means if the allegations are true she participated in a terror attack and the manslaughter of several people."

France wants to question Kabuye about a 1994 plane crash that killed then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, leading to a campaign of genocide in the central African nation. Several others were killed in the crash including three French crew members.

Ties between France and Rwanda have been badly strained since the warrants were issued and on Monday hundreds of people, including Kabuye's husband, protested outside the German Embassy in Kigali, chanting "Free Rose, Free Rose".

Some demonstrators waved placards reading "France: Your days of lies are numbered" and "Germany: Why don't you arrest genocidaires on your soil".

Rwandan security forces in riot gear kept a close eye on the protesters. Rwanda said the arrest warrant was a "political game designed to blur the truth and weaken the government".

But a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin said German officials had been obliged to arrest Kabuye.

"The arrest warrant was binding and obligatory for the German government and the police. Against this backdrop we had no other choice than to make the arrest," ministry spokesman Jens Ploettner said.

He said it was "only a question of a few weeks" before Kabuye would be sent to France.

Kabuye's lawyer, Lef Forster, told Reuters in Paris that his client was willing to go before a French judge.

"She believes there are no charges," Forster said. "We will know today or tomorrow when she will arrive in France and whether the arrest warrant is turned into a committal order."

MASS KILLINGS

Habyarimana's plane was hit by a missile in 1994 and his death ignited mass killings of Tutsis and some moderate Hutus. Kagame was then leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front which defeated the government's Hutu militias to end the genocide.

Rwanda broke off diplomatic ties with Paris in November 2006 because of the warrants. Kigali 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. It summoned the German ambassador to Rwanda.

Rwanda's Information Ministry said that Berlin had warned Kabuye against travelling to Germany due to the arrest warrant but that she had travelled there and to other European countries earlier in the year without incident.

"Kabuye is innocent, which is why she undertook the trip despite warnings, and ultimately why she is ready to face trial in France," the statement said.

Becker-Toussaint, the prosecutor in Hesse, said: "She came in the company of another private individual who did not have any diplomatic status. She was on the plane and not in the company of the president." (Additional reporting by Thierry Leveque in Paris and Jack Kimball in Kigali) (Editing by Louise Ireland)

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