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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - The volatile situation in Haiti's largest and most violent slum could prove a major obstacle for President Rene Preval as he seeks to stabilize his country and put it on a democratic path.

Preval appealed for peace in the troubled Caribbean nation last Sunday as he was inaugurated as Haiti's first democratically elected leader since Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled an armed revolt more than two years ago.

But leaders of gangs in Cite Soleil, a shantytown home to at least 300,000 people and a potent symbol of misery in the poorest country in the Americas, say there can be no peace without justice and a speedy response to their demands.

No ultimatums have been set, according to several gang leaders who voiced cautious support for Preval when interviewed by Reuters last week.

But chief among their demands is one for the return of Aristide, who went into exile in February 2004 in the face of a bloody rebellion and pressure from Washington and Paris to step down.

Preval, a one-time Aristide ally and previously president of Haiti from 1996 to 2001, has said there is nothing to prevent Aristide's return. He stopped short of saying he would welcome back a figure still seen as a champion of the poor but reviled by Haiti's tiny, wealthy elite.

"Aristide must come back," said Augudson Nicolas, a slight man known as General Toutou who controls one of the gangs in the teeming warren of shacks, narrow alleys and open sewers.

The United States has warned Preval not to allow Aristide back -- accusing him of despotism and reliance on armed thugs to silence opponents. But that could reignite violence in Cite Soleil, which has seen an orgy of bloodshed over the past two years.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission, now numbering about 9,000 troops and civilian police, has been in Haiti since June 2004 to support a U.S.-backed interim government.

U.N. PULLOUT

Preval has asked the mission, widely despised in the slums, to stay on for now but that too could backfire on him.

Cite Soleil's gang leaders are demanding the withdrawal of the U.N. troops, saying they have killed women, children and other defenseless people since rolling into the shantytown in menacing armored personnel carriers.

Resentment runs high among many residents, whose cinder-block homes are pockmarked by bullets fired during pitched battles between U.N. troops and Cite Soleil's gangs.

Georges Masillon, 54, standing outside a sand-bagged former supermarket where blue-helmeted U.N. troops are bivouacked, bemoaned the fate of his 29-year-old son on crutches nearby.

The young man was shot by Jordanian peacekeepers while trying to run for safety on February 1 when gunfire erupted for no apparent reason, Masillon said. One bullet severed his Achilles tendon while the exit wound from another damaged his genitals.

"MINUSTAH has done nothing to help us, they have only hurt us," said Masillon, using the French-language acronym of the U.N. mission

"Cite Soleil gave Preval power," said Sonson Pierre, a self-proclaimed soldier in what he described as the army of Commander Evans, one of Cite Soleil's main gang leader.

"If Preval doesn't respond to us it's going get hot," he said, referring to the demands for a U.N. withdrawal.

Several of Haiti's gangs had offered to lay down their weapons once Preval took office but none has disarmed so far.

Evans' followers, many barefoot and brandishing automatic assault rifles, danced through mud-choked alleys and fired off gunshots into the air last Thursday in celebration after briefly taking a Brazilian army colonel hostage. Evans, who figures prominently on Haiti's most wanted list, said there had been a botched U.N. attempt at his arrest.

"All we want for this country is peace," he said. "I don't think the whites (U.N. peacekeepers) want peace. They should leave."