Secretary Antony J. Blinken and Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille Before Their Meeting

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, good afternoon, everyone.  It’s a great pleasure to have Prime Minister Conille and to have Foreign Minister Dupuy here, and our colleagues from Haiti.  This is an important time for Haiti, an important time for the many countries – including the United States – that strongly support Haiti. 

We have the prime minister, foreign minister, a government in place, and we have the Transitional Presidential Council which has been stood up.  And we have the deployment now of the Multinational Security Support mission to help the Haitian National Police regain full control of critical parts of Port-au-Prince and the country, all of this to ensure that Haiti can return to the path of having free and fair elections and making sure that, as we move forward, the support for Haiti from the international community can go forward in the most robust way possible.

The prime minister, his government are leading Haiti at an absolutely critical time to be able to move all of this forward, but he comes to Washington with the strong support of the United States and the strong support of many other countries, both in the region that we share and well beyond, including, of course, our colleagues from Kenya who are leading the Multinational Security Support mission in this moment. 

So I’m very much looking forward to hearing from the prime minister and from his team about the steps forward to be taken as Haiti moves toward elections and as we make sure that the environment in Haiti is strongly conducive to those elections, and also to making sure that the support, assistance, development work can go forward in a way that clearly benefits the people of Haiti.

As we’re sitting here today, we’re also tracking, of course, Hurricane Beryl, and the United States stands ready to assist any of our friends and partners who need assistance in the event the hurricane does any damage.  But it’s something that we’re tracking very carefully. 

Prime Minister, welcome.  So good to have you here today.

PRIME MINISTER CONILLE:  Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary.  I think you framed it extremely well.  While we’re not underestimating the challenges ahead, we’re extremely grateful for the support and solidarity of the American people.  And we would like you to convey our gratitude to President Biden, who’s been, of course, a strong champion for Haiti.  We think the next few weeks and months will be quite interesting, but we’re confident with the establishment of the presidential council, the establishment of this new government, we’re going to be able to take on these challenges straight on.

So again, thank you for hosting us here this afternoon.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Thanks, everyone.