Prime Min­is­ter Gar­ry Conille has re­it­er­at­ed his call for gun­men to lay down their arms, even as the leader of the coali­tion gang “G9 an Fan­mi e Alye” Jim­my Cherisi­er, said his group was pre­pared to have di­a­logue with the au­thor­i­ties.

“Armed gangs have a very lim­it­ed time to lay down their arms,” Conille told a news con­fer­ence on his re­turn to the French French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try fol­low­ing a sev­en-day vis­it to the Unit­ed States.

“The State is not go­ing to wait in­def­i­nite­ly,” he said, adding “di­a­logue will on­ly be con­sid­ered when the ban­dits have laid down their weapons and rec­og­nized the au­thor­i­ty of the State”.

Conille said that the pur­pose of his vis­it to the Unit­ed Sates was main­ly to ex­pose to the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Haiti’s part­ners the clear vi­sion and the main pri­or­i­ties of his gov­ern­ment, in ac­cor­dance with the Po­lit­i­cal Agree­ment for a peace­ful and or­der­ly tran­si­tion of April 3, 2024

Last Fri­day, Cherisi­er, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer and spokesman for the crim­i­nal group “Liv­ing To­geth­er, which is an al­liance of two of the most pow­er­ful gang coali­tions in the coun­try “Gpèp” and “G9”, ap­peared in a video, say­ing “we have de­cid­ed to pub­licly an­nounce that our strat­e­gy of lay­ing down arms to fa­cil­i­tate na­tion­al di­a­logue and pro­mote peace is al­ready writ­ten in black and white on our agen­da.

FILE - Two images of leader of the coalition gang “G9 an Fanmi e Alye” Jimmy Cherisier. Last Friday the impeccably dressed gang leader (right) said he wanted to have dialogue with the new government. [Image courtesy CMC]

“We are pre­pared to ap­point a cred­i­ble and co­her­ent Hait­ian cit­i­zen in the di­as­po­ra to fa­cil­i­tate di­a­logue in or­der to put an end to this mafia war and fa­cil­i­tate the path to­wards peace in the coun­try, de­nounc­ing…the po­lit­i­cal mafia and econ­o­my that is hold­ing the coun­try hostage,” said an im­pec­ca­bly dressed Cherisi­er, who is al­so known as Bar­be­cue.

His lat­est video is in stark con­trast to one aired a few days ago when he said his group was pre­pared to con­front the Kenyan troops, whom it de­scribed as “in­vaders”.

Kenya is spear­head­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil sanc­tioned Mul­ti-na­tion­al Sup­port Mis­sion to the French-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try that has been wracked with po­lit­i­cal, so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lems, high­light­ed by crim­i­nal vi­o­lence ever since the as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se in Ju­ly 2021.

Kenya has of­fered to send about 1,000 troops to sta­bilise Haiti along­side per­son­nel from sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing The Ba­hamas, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize and Ja­maica. The first batch of 400 Kenyan troops ar­rived here last month.

In his video on Fri­day, Cherisi­er said “we want peace be­cause we want to de­stroy war. We want di­a­logue be­cause we want peace.

“It is on­ly through na­tion­al di­a­logue that the Hait­ian State will be able to re­gain con­trol of the coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ries, as re­quired by the Con­sti­tu­tion,” he added. —PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC)