PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (Reuters) - Leaders from several Caribbean nations will meet with Haitian opposition leaders next week to try to resolve Haiti's increasingly tense political stalemate, Trinidad's foreign minister said on Thursday.

"We are hoping that we will be able to persuade the opposition to shift from their very hard-line stance, namely that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide must go before anything moves forward again in Haiti," Trinidad and Tobago Foreign Minister Knowlson Gift said.

He said Haiti's opposition leaders had agreed to meet in Nassau on Wednesday with the prime ministers of the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. The meeting was organized by the Caribbean Community regional bloc, which recently sent a fact-finding mission to Haiti.

Several people have been killed in recent months when increasingly large anti-government marches were attacked by pro-Aristide gunmen.

The government blamed the opposition for the bloodshed while demonstrators accused Aristide of corruption and human rights violations and have called for his departure.

Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, was hugely popular when he became Haiti's first democratically elected leader in 1991. He was deposed soon afterward but restored to power by a U.S.-led invasion after three years in exile.

He was re-elected in 2000 but his popularity has waned because of allegations his party committed fraud in that ballot, and because of accusations of corruption and violence.

The unresolved dispute over the 2000 vote has prevented a new ballot from being held. The terms of most Haitian legislators expired on Monday, immobilizing parliament.

On Wednesday, Aristide called for new parliamentary elections within six months, but opposition leaders said there were inadequate safeguards to assure free and fair ballot.

Aristide met with CARICOM officials and with President Bush (news - web sites) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) during last week's Summit of the Americas in Mexico. Gift said the group urged Aristide to be more accommodating "in listening to the other side."

Gift said the other leaders told Aristide, "You've got to do something, this is about your last chance. You cannot let this opportunity slip by."