(Adds elite soldiers disarming protesting police)

By Saliou Samb

CONAKRY, June 16 (Reuters) - Police in Guinea demanding payment of salary arrears took the police chief hostage, fired into the air and blocked a road to the main port on Monday, just days after the authorities settled a pay mutiny in the army.

Elite soldiers disarmed groups of police late in the day, but the police chief was still being held prisoner by nightfall.

The West African country, the world's top exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite, agreed on Friday to promote all junior ranks of the army after soldiers last month looted shops and officers' homes in a mutiny that killed at least six people.

New Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare had already agreed to pay the military mutineers 5 million Guinean francs ($1,100) each in claimed salary arrears.

"Police officers are frustrated that soldiers get promoted every three years, whereas they don't move up. What's more, their salaries stay the same but the cost of living is going up," a senior police officer told Reuters.

A Reuters witness in the Tombo district of the coastal capital Conakry saw police officers shoot in the air on Monday as they drove at high speed on board three vehicles.

The police took hostage their national director, Sekou Mohamed Bangoura, another senior officer said.

There were no details of the precise circumstances in which he was being held. During their mutiny last month, soldiers took at least two senior officers hostage to press their demands.

Elite soldiers in red berets disarmed police protesters late on Monday and cleared tree trunks they had used to block traffic on a main highway leading to the city's port, witnesses said.

Negotiations were under way to try to settle the dispute.

"We are on strike because for the past year we have not been paid our monthly 50,000 francs ($11). For the moment they have only promised to pay us 300,000 francs, which is half the amount outstanding," said Municipal Police officer Ousmane Camara.

The Municipal Police, run by the city council, performs minor security tasks such as guarding parked cars.

Souare's appointment as prime minister last month threatened to destabilise a fragile political arrangement between President Lansana Conte and unions who protested against his rule in 2007.

Conte summarily sacked the previous prime minister, Lansana Kouyate, a former diplomat appointed with the unions' agreement to end weeks of protests during which more than 130 people were killed, mostly shot dead by Conte's loyal security services.

Unions were not consulted over Souare's appointment, and some senior union leaders threatened to call a general strike.

Guinea's armed forces, which suffer from generational and ethnic divisions, have long been a prop for the president, who is in his 70s, since he seized power in a 1984 coup.

But they have staged several protests over the last 12 years. Analysts say the latest government concessions to mutineers show the fragility of Conte's rule. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com) (Writing by Alistair Thomson; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Elizabeth Piper)

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