"Whether they will have to follow the process here in Haiti or to follow the process in the United States, it is for the judge to decide... based on the law in Haiti," said Culture and Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

She later said the group's appearance before a judge, originally expected Monday, had been postponed because their own Creole language interpreter had not been made available.

Haitian police seized five men and five women with US passports, as well as two Haitians, as they tried late Friday to cross into the neighboring Dominican Republic with 33 children aged between two months and 14 years.

The minister suggested the crippling earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12 meant the justice system was not capable of trying the Americans and as such could be transferred to the United States.

A woman identifying herself as a mother of at least one of the children told journalists at the police headquarters, where the Americans were being held, that she had been told the group "had an organization would help the children."

Laura Silsby, head of the Idaho-based group called New Life Children's Refuge, insisted the group's aims were entirely altruistic.

"We came here literally to just help the children. Our intentions were good," she told AFP from the police detention facility where they are being held near Port-au-Prince's international airport.

"We wanted to help those who lost parents in the quake or were abandoned," she said.

The question of transferring the group was raised in a meeting earlier Monday between Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and US officials, including the US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten.

"As there are a lot of (government buildings) destroyed, we can discuss (the situation) with the United States" about whether they will face justice there, Lassegue reported the prime minister as saying.

Mazar Fortil, interim prosecutor for the main Port-au-Prince court, meanwhile told AFP that the group, which is yet to be formally charged, could be tried for kidnapping minors, child trafficking and a lesser charge of criminal conspiracy.

Asked whether they would be transferred to the United States for trial, Fortil said it was "too early to tell."

The 7.0-magnitude quake killed 170,000 people, rendered more than one million homeless and left many children vulnerable in the Americas' poorest nation.

Haitian officials have warned that child traffickers could take advantage of the post-quake chaos, and that even legitimate adoption agencies might rush to take orphans before proper checks have been conducted.

The United States has urged citizens wanting to adopt orphaned Haitian children to be patient, as reports emerge that some children have fallen prey to human traffickers or been misidentified as orphans.

Officials at the US embassy here and in Washington insist the situation remains a case for the Haitian justice system.

"What the Haitian government will decide to do concerning their legal juridiction is up to the Haitian governmen... they are being processed... through the criminal system," said US consul general Donald Moore.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington would be guided by Haitian officials, saying that "once we know the facts we'll determine what the appropriate course is, but the judgement is really up to the Haitian government."

An international care center just outside the Haitian capital where the children were taken after being intercepted at the border maintained said -- contrary to statements made by the US group -- that most of the youngsters still have family that survived the earthquake.

According to Patricia Vargas, regional director for the SOS Children's Village, based on conversations with older children of the group, some of them "say their parents are alive, and some of them gave us an address and phone numbers."

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