NAIROBI.- He President of Kenya, William Ruto, stated that his troops will be deployed in Haiti in three weeks, to help quell the growing criminal violence plaguing the country.
The Kenyan president confirmed that a planning team already established in the Central American country is working with the Haitian Police to ensure preparations before the arrival of the troops.
“Once we have that evaluation that we have agreed with the Police and the Haitian leaders, we consider a horizon of three weeks or so to be ready for deployment, once everything is ready on the ground,” he explained. in an interview with the British BBC network.
Ruto made these statements at the end of an official visit to the United States in which heThe White House urged a “rapid” deployment of troops in Haiti after knowing that An American missionary couple died last Thursday in an attack by armed gangs. “We are doing this to prevent more people from losing their lives at the hands of gangs,” she said.
In this sense, the US Government committed to supporting this “accelerated deployment”, after having been collaborating with Kenya in the cconstruction of a base in Haiti where the mission’s troops and equipment will be housed and which, according to Ruto, is “70 percent finished.”
President Ruto assured that his Government has moved “cautiously” to ensure that security issues have been addressed, including plans for equipment, infrastructure and establishing a “relationship” with the Haitian police force.
Furthermore, as he explained, there is a written agreement with the Haitian Transitional Presidential Council to guarantee that Kenya’s presence will be received as a “pacifying” force and not as an occupying force, something that worries the opposition that questions the legality of these actions.
Kenya leads the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti, an international security force for the Central American country and requested by the Government of Ariel Henry, who left power in an attempt to stop the violence of criminal gangs.
Henry became president of the country in 2021 after the assassination of the then president, Jovenel Moise, but in March of this year, and in the face of a new escalation of violence that prevented him from even returning to Haiti After a trip, he agreed to resign and be replaced by a body of seven members and two observers.
Since then, a Haitian Transitional Presidential Council, led by the former top representative of the Haitian Senate between 1995 and 2000, Edgard Leblanc. The objective of this body is to temporarily fill the political vacuum, for which it will have Michel Patrick Boisvert as the new interim prime minister until the formation of a new Government.
This new stage in Haiti should conclude with the holding of elections in 2026, a decade after the last elections.
Source: With information from Europa Press
