France has condemned the arrest in Switzerland of film director Roman Polanski, who has French citizenship, BBC reported.
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he had been "stunned" to hear about the arrest, and President Nicolas Sarkozy was following the case.
Mr Polanski, 76, faces extradition to the US for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977.
The Paris-born Polish filmaker was detained in Zurich on Saturday as he travelled to a film festival.
He is being held under a 2005 international alert issued by the US. A Swiss spokesman said the US would now have to make a formal extradition request.
Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said that because of agreements with the US, "when Mr Polanski arrived we had no choice from a legal point of view but to arrest him".
"He obviously has the right to appeal and I think he will do so," she added.
'Never showed up'
Mr Mitterrand's office said the culture minister "strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them".
Mr Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with an underage girl.
He was initially indicted on six counts and faced up to life in prison.
The filmmaker has not set foot in the US for more than 30 years.
In recent years, he has tried to have the rape case dismissed, claiming the original judge, who is now dead, arranged a plea bargain but later reneged.
Mr Polanski has been to Switzerland before, but this time US authorities apparently knew of his trip in advance.
That gave them time to prepare the groundwork for his arrest and send a provisional arrest warrant to Swiss authorities, judicial officials said.
In the past, Mr Polanski had heard in advance about requests for his arrest on planned trips, and had changed his plans, said Sandi Gibbons, the Los Angeles district attorney's office spokeswoman.
"He never showed up in the country where he was supposed to be, and he was never arrested," she said.
The victim at the centre of the case, Samantha Geimer, has previously asked for the charges to be dropped.