PARIS (AP) - A French military tribunal opened an investigation yesterday into allegations that French peacekeepers had a role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, judicial officials said.

A judge from the tribunal visited Rwanda last month to interview six Rwandans, who had filed a lawsuit in February accusing troops of "complicity in genocide" and "crimes against humanity".

Judge Brigitte Raynaud, who made the trip in November, will be heading the investigation, said judicial officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

During her trip to the central African nation, Raynaud interviewed the six Rwandans, seeking more information on accusations that French troops allowed extremists into refugee camps where members of the Tutsi ethnic minority were picked up and later killed. The six, five men and a woman, escaped the massacres, although some lost relatives.

Jacques Baillet, prosecutor of the Army Tribunal of Paris, opened the investigation based on testimonies from two of the six people and deemed the other four statements to be inadmissible, the officials said.

Hutu militias killed more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus during the genocide, which lasted from April to July 1994. Some estimate that up to 800,000 died.

Rwandan government and genocide survivors organisations have often accused France of training and arming the extremist militias and former government troops, who led the genocide.

When the suit was filed in February, lawyer Antoine Comte said his clients had "very precise" information on the intervention of the troops who were part of the humanitarian operation mounted by the French under UN auspices.

A central claim is that French soldiers allowed members of the Rwandan Armed Forces or militiamen to enter camps set up to protect Tutsis, the lawyer said.

French officials have repeatedly denied that France aided or directed the Hutu forces involved in the slaughter.

In 1998, a French parliamentary panel absolved France of responsibility in the slaughter. But the lawmakers said that successive French governments had given diplomatic and military support to Rwanda's extremist government between 1990 and 1994.

A French civilian investigatory panel, made up of lawyers, historians and leaders of human rights groups issued a 600-page report early this year alleging that French forces helped the attackers more than the victims.

Last year, Rwanda set up a commission charged with collecting evidence of France's alleged involvement in the genocide.

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