COLOMBO, April 27 (Reuters) - A renegade faction that split from the Tamil Tiger rebels and is widely believed to have Sri Lankan government backing is not taking seriously its promise not to recruit child soldiers, UNICEF said on Friday.

The U.N. children's agency sent a team to Sri Lanka's east last week to start regular inspections of areas where the so-called Karuna Faction operates to verify that no children were being used as soldiers.

But the mission was led to a jungle location where "a hastily mocked-up 'site' awaited", UNICEF said. Requests to inspect known locations were rebuffed.

"Our supposed cooperation is obscured by the faction's apparent determination to delay, frustrate, and mislead the process to end the use of children as combatants in this country's conflict," a statement quoted UNICEF spokesman Andrew Brooks as saying.

Following a U.N. fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka last November, the leader of the faction, known as Colonel Karuna, gave assurances his group would cooperate in efforts to end the recruitment of child soldiers, UNICEF said.

"Unfortunately, despite exhaustive approaches to the Karuna group and TMVP officials since then, the few children they've released falls well short of the public commitments they've made," said Brooks. Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, or TMVP, is the Karuna group's political arm.

"We continue to receive reports of children being recruited. It augurs badly for Sri Lanka's children in the current climate of increased hostilities. We seriously question whether the Karuna group is acting in good faith."

In 2004, Karuna split from the Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting for decades for an independent state on the north and east of the Indian Ocean island for ethnic minority Tamils.

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