(Corrects spelling of town's name in paragraphs 7, 15, to Ouanaminthe from Ouaminthes)

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 30 (Reuters) - Dozens of U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police took up positions around groups of ex-soldiers occupying former military buildings in northern Haiti and began on Wednesday to negotiate their surrender, officials said.

Tensions between the rebel soldiers and the U.N. forces rose on Tuesday night in the northern city of Cap-Haitien when civilians supporting the former soldiers' demands for the reinstatement of the Caribbean country's once-feared army threw rocks at the international troops, witnesses said.

But by Wednesday, the situation had quieted down.

Eucher Luc Joseph, secretary of state for public safety, said the U.N. forces, backed by armored vehicles, and Haitian police were negotiating with the rebels.

Joseph said earlier that the government would not tolerate a long takeover.

Haiti's minister of the interior, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, flew to Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, on Wednesday to seek a resolution.

The ex-soldiers seized the onetime army buildings in Cap-Haitien and in Ouanaminthe, a town on the border with the Dominican Republic, on Tuesday to demand the reinstatement of the disbanded army and 14 years of back pay.

Their action was reminiscent of acts of civil disobedience that in the past have spread like wildfire through the impoverished nation of 9 million people and led to the collapse of past governments.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, has been struggling to establish democracy since the Duvalier family dictatorship was overthrown in the 1980s.

Since a slave revolt secured Haiti's independence from France, most of the country's two centuries of freedom have been marked by turmoil and bloodshed.

A bloody rebellion of former soldiers and street gangs in 2004 led to the ouster of then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled Haiti for exile.

U.N. peacekeepers have been providing security in Haiti since shortly after Aristide was ousted.

Aristide disbanded the army in 1995 during his first term in office. Former soldiers say the move was illegal and have periodically demanded back pay since.

The men who occupied the Cap-Haitien former army headquarters, which is now used as offices for the government's foreign affairs and national heritage departments, wore khaki-colored, military-style uniforms, but no weapons were seen, radio correspondents at the scene reported.

Those who took over the army building in Ouanaminthe had pistols and clubs, reporters there said.

(Editing by Michael Christie and Eric Walsh)

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