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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb 14 (Reuters) - His eyes shaded by dark aviator glasses, James Petit Frere, a rugged gang leader from Haiti's tough Cite Soleil shantytown, gestures to a series of charred tin-and-cement hovels that residents once called home.

"They (rival gangs) burned these down in December 2000." Then, gesturing across a stream bank choked with refuse. "They burned those down a few months ago."

Exasperated and wearied by the mounting destruction of street warfare and years of tit-for-tat revenge killings, 15 warring gangs in Haiti's worst slum recently called a truce, deciding, they said, that if the government of this Caribbean nation cannot help them end the cycle of poverty and violence, they will try to help themselves.

But five gangs refused to join the truce, and whether the peacemakers will ever be able to make headway against the intractable misery of Cite Soleil remains to be seen. A tour of the sprawling slum reveals the magnitude of the task at hand.

A warren of tiny shacks in dusty streets crisscrossed by jury-rigged electrical wiring and open sewers on the northwestern edge of the Haitian capital, Cite Soleil slumps from the main airport road toward the marshlands that bleed into the polluted Bay of Port-au-Prince.

The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti is struggling to establish democratic institutions after throwing off decades of dictatorship in the 1990s, led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former populist priest who took office a year ago for his second term.

In a country where 62 percent of residents are underfed, Cite Soleil stands out as the poorest of the poor.

HOLDING THE SLUM HOSTAGE

Frere, a polite, lanky 21-year old neatly dressed in pressed shirt and jeans, is one of the most powerful gang leaders in the slum, chief of two gangs, from the Boston and Soleil 19 neighborhoods. He and other gang leaders formulated a truce to improve their neighborhoods and end a feud that saw eight people killed and a Canadian journalist wounded in one week in mid-January.

The five gangs would not join the fold despite a warning from rivals that the time for an alliance was at hand.

"These gangs are trying to hold Cite Soleil hostage," said Faubert Jean Pierre, leader of the faction from the Belekou district. "President Aristide is trying to help us, with schools and with education, but these guys have decided that nothing will change unless he goes through them."

The Brooklyn and Tracks gangs are the worst, he said.

The latter gang, which takes its name from the railroad tracks that run past the now-abandoned Haitian-American Sugar Company headquarters near their base, has a fierce reputation for violence and drug abuse. Residents tell tales about the orange glow of their crack pipes illuminating alleyways.

"I was raped three times," says Dadent, a small, fine-featured woman, hair braided in a mass of cornrows. "I have to move from house to house every night because those guys always come back."

"Look at what happened to that journalist," says Lise Lande, a careworn woman in a pressed blue dress and a straw hat, referring to the Canadian reporter Mathieu Prud'homme, 27, who was shot while interviewing people in Cite Soleil on Jan. 21. "They shot him because they want to make people afraid to come and talk to us, so they can do whatever they want."

The journalist is recovering from his wound.

Frere's brother, a gang leader who goes by the name of Tupac, was recently jailed as the muscle behind a kidnapping ring that had terrorized residents.

Frere and his friends, however, say they have a purpose beyond rotting in jail.

"My mother was killed by the FRAPH (an anti-Aristide paramilitary group) and so was my father. So my brother and I were on our own when we were very young. I got involved in politics first when I was 15, trying to understand my life and my situation," Frere said.

"We want to try and help our people now and President Aristide has been the only president who has tried to do something for poor people like us," he said.

Frere seemed proud that residents of Cite Soleil were among the vanguard of mobs that appeared at the gates of the National Palace after it was attacked by gunmen in an attempt to topple Aristide on Dec. 17. But those same mobs burned to death several people allegedly connected to the assault.

"The police called us, early in the morning, and I took my gun and my people and was gone, to defend my palace and defend my president," he said.

In the slums, the intensity of the recent conflict kept Haiti's National Police, a civilian force created after Aristide disbanded the dreaded army seven years ago, on the sidelines.

GIVE UP YOUR GUNS, POLICE TELL GANGS

Police said if the gangs are serious about the truce they announced at a news conference in the capital several weeks ago, they need to give up their guns. So far, none of them have disarmed, fearful of giving up their guns before the police jail the hard-core criminals.

"The first step in restoring order is disarming the gangs," police spokesman Jean Dady Simeon said. "After that, the police can set about restoring some safety to the daily lives of people."

Some gang members contend that they would gladly disarm if the police could find a way to protect them. "We would give up the guns if we could," said one gang member. "Who would want to live like this if they didn't have to?"

The gang leaders say Aristide met with them at the palace three days after the coup attempt to urge a truce and promise that he was trying to address their problems. The gangs' press conference, a few said, was a way to pressure officials to put their words into action.

"President Aristide wanted two representatives from each of Cite Soleil's 34 different groups to find a solution, but those five gangs want to run the whole thing themselves," resident Junior Milard said. "We hope the president hears us and helps us."

Some observers believe the crime rate in Port-au-Prince has dropped since Aristide began his second term in office last February. The capital has been plagued by street crime in recent years and is a major transshipment point for South American cocaine en route to the United States.

But Cite Soleil and its sister neighborhood, La Saline, are harder nuts to crack.

Cut off from the rest of Port-au-Prince by potholed, dusty Route National 1, Cite Soleil is home to some 200,000 people, about 10 percent of the capital's population.

The poverty present everywhere in Haiti here reaches staggering proportions in the slum, with thousands of people literally clinging to the city up to the very edge of the rank water.

In claustrophobic lanes swarming with flies, a child plays with a kite fashioned out of a black plastic bag, while schoolgirls in blue and pink uniforms walk hand-in-hand.

"We are tired of all the killing," Frere said "We want to concentrate on community projects, help our country, teaching people how to read, how to speak English. Me, I would like to be a policeman, or a doctor."

By Michael Deibert