US media, on Saturday, February 24, reported that Kenyan government officials abruptly cancelled a video meeting with their Haitian counterparts after the two countries failed to strike an agreement on the deployment of police officers to the Caribbean nation.
Earlier this week, Kenya was expected to finalise the bilateral security meeting despite a court ruling barring the deployment of Kenyan police officers to the Carribean state.
Kenya and Haiti hoped that the meeting would seal the loophole used by the court to bar the mission, that is the lack of a reciprocal arrangement to facilitate the deployment.
The video call was a follow-up of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding the deployment of the task force, as pledged by President William Ruto, with Kenya set to announce new mission dates.
Up to date, Kenya and Haiti have yet to release official communication on the development of the mission and whether the two countries will resume talks.
In mid-February this year, the delegates from Kenya met officials from the US State Department and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs to iron out their differences.
The meeting was said to have had a positive outcome as the two teams agreed on the funding, the direction the mission would take and the leadership structure.
However, a section of US politicians only want a larger part of the Ksh29 billion (USD200 million) set aside for the project to be withheld until Kenya releases its police officers.
US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken who led a G2O meeting over the same issue in Brazil concurred that the lack of mutual agreements between Kenya and Haiti risked derailing the mission.
Nonetheless, more stakeholders were open to funding the mission despite the drawbacks.
“I think today we had at least another Ksh17 billion (USD120 million) committed to that effort,” Blinken stated shortly after the meeting.
Germany pledged Ksh775 million while Canada through its Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly revealed that it had set Ksh8.6 billion for the mission.
Canada also promised, to remit another Ksh4.5 billion towards various security support in Haiti.
Meanwhile, the United Nations already set up a trust fund contribution which raised Ksh143 million for the training of Kenyan officials in the French language ahead of deployment.
