By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 13 (Reuters) - One of Haiti's most wanted gang leaders was arrested on Tuesday as security forces intensified efforts to crack down on criminal gangs in the troubled Caribbean country, authorities said.

The gang leader, who goes only by the name Evans, was arrested near the southern town of Les Cayes, where he fled last month after a raid by hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers on his stronghold in the notorious Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil.

Evans and his men have been linked to a rash of kidnappings in the capital and to pitched street battles with U.N. soldiers amid Cite Soleil's battered warren of tin-roofed shanties.

"We arrested Evans early this morning with two other people, including his girlfriend," police Commissioner Fritz Saint-Fort told Reuters.

"We caught him very easily," added Inspector Gilet Alexis Camille, a police spokesman in Les Cayes. "We had proper intelligence that told us he was in the area."

Several other gang leaders from the capital's sprawling slums have also fled their strongholds over the last couple of months after U.N.-led security forces stepped up operations against the gangs.

The 8,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti arrived in 2004 after the ouster of populist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Many gang leaders are still outspoken supporters of Aristide and see him as a champion of long-neglected slum-dwellers in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

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