Secretary Blinken: Well, good morning, everybody. It’s a great pleasure to have Prime Minister Conille and Foreign Minister Dupuis and our colleagues from Haiti here. This is a critical time for Haiti, it’s a critical time for many countries – including the United States – that strongly support Haiti.
We have a prime minister, a foreign minister, a government, and we have a transitional presidential council that has been stood up. And now we have the deployment of the Multinational Security Assistance Mission that will help the Haitian National Police regain full control of Port-au-Prince and important parts of the country, all to ensure that Haiti can get back on the path to free and fair elections and to ensure that the support for Haiti from the international community can be the strongest it can be as we move forward.
The Prime Minister, his Government are leading Haiti at a critical time when it needs to be able to move everything forward, but they are coming with the strong support of the United States in Washington and the strong support of many other countries, both in the regions that we share and beyond, including of course our allies in Kenya, who are leading the Multinational Security Assistance Mission at the moment.
So I am very much looking forward to hearing from the Prime Minister and his team on what steps need to be taken going forward to hold elections in Haiti, and we want to make sure that the environment in Haiti is conducive for those elections, and also to make sure that the support, the assistance, the development work can move forward in a way that clearly benefits the people of Haiti.
As we sit here today, we are of course also tracking Hurricane Beryl, and the United States stands ready to assist any of our friends and partners who need assistance if there is any damage from the hurricane. But this is something we are monitoring very carefully.
Prime Minister, welcome. It is a great pleasure to have you here today.
Prime Minister Konil: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I think you’ve summed it up very well. While we’re not underestimating the challenges that lie ahead, we’re extremely grateful for the support and the solidarity of the American people. And we want you to express your gratitude to President Biden, who has certainly been a strong champion for Haiti. We think the next few weeks and months will be very interesting, but we’re confident that with the establishment of the Presidential Council, with the establishment of this new government, we’ll be able to tackle these challenges head on.
So once again, thank you for hosting us here this afternoon.
Secretary Blinken: Thanks everyone.
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