THE United States is considering launching a United Nations peacekeeping operation in Haiti as one way to secure funding and staffing for a Kenya-led mission deployed to quell gang violence in the Caribbean country, a top US diplomat said on Wednesday.

US assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs Brian A Nichols spoke hours after The Miami Herald reported that President Joe Biden’s administration is considering the possibility of a traditional UN peacekeeping operation given the limited funding and equipment available to the current mission.

Mr Nichols told reporters: “A peacekeeping operation is one of the ways we could accomplish that.