A French court sentenced a former Rwandan army captain to 25 years in prison over the 1994 genocide Friday, in a landmark ruling just weeks ahead of the massacre's 20th anniversary.

Pascal Simbikangwa, a 54-year-old former member of the Rwandan presidential guard, was found guilty of perpetrating genocide and of complicity in crimes against humanity.

A French court on Friday ordered a news website to remove the recordings of secretly-taped conversations involving Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president, in what has become known as the "Sarkoleaks" scandal.

Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, who is also heard in some of the private conversations, launched legal action last week after extracts of the tapes secretly recorded by the former leader's then political advisor Patrick Buisson were published on news site Atlantico.

France warned on Friday that the launch of a much-needed EU military operation in conflict-ridden Central African Republic planned for next week may not take place for lack of troops.

"If additional efforts are not made rapidly, it won't be possible to launch as planned this essential operation next week," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a joint statement.

Islamist protesters in Sudan burned the French flag on Friday during their second weekly protest against France's intervention in the Central African Republic.

About 200 demonstrators accused French peacekeepers and the mostly Christian anti-balaka (anti-machete) vigilantes in Central Africa of "crimes against humanity" as they set one flag alight and cut up several others.

A notorious Islamist militia leader known as "Red Beard" has been killed in French missile strikes in north-eastern Mali, a senior Malian army officer told Agence France Presse.

Omar Ould Hamaha was a commander of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), armed groups which occupied northern Mali for almost ten months in 2012.

A French court is due to deliver its much-anticipated verdict in the landmark trial of a Rwandan army captain accused of complicity in genocide on Friday, just weeks ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 1994 atrocity.

Prosecutors in the trial -- the first of its kind in France -- have asked for life imprisonment for Pascal Simbikangwa, branding him an ethnic "cleanser" who was "radically committed" to his work and a "man capable of the worst".

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into allegations a firm belonging to friends of the main opposition leader systematically over-billed his UMP party, a judicial source said Thursday.

The probe was launched on March 5 following revelations by weekly Le Point that Jean-Francois Cope, leader of the UMP party to which former French president Nicolas Sarkozy also belongs, allegedly used his influence to channel party contracts to the PR company, which then charged the UMP more than the market rate.

The East-West split re-opened by the crisis in Ukraine hardened Wednesday when President Barack Obama threw Washington's weight firmly behind Ukraine in its stand-off with Moscow.

Obama welcomed Kiev's interim premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the White House and stood by his side as both leaders sternly warned Russia that Ukraine would not surrender its sovereignty.

A French court on Tuesday threw out a plea by Nicolas Sarkozy against the seizure of his diaries by judges probing a corruption case, in what has the potential to harm his chances of a political comeback.

The former French president appears increasingly threatened by a labyrinthine web of graft cases, and Tuesday's ruling is crucial as it paves the way for the potentially compromising diaries to be used against him.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned Tuesday that sanctions against Russia could come as early as this week if Moscow does not respond to Western proposals to solve the crisis in Ukraine.

"If they respond positively (to the proposals), (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry will go to Moscow, and then sanctions will not be immediate. If they do not respond or if they respond negatively, there will be a series of sanctions that could be taken as early as this week," he said on France Inter radio.