The council will temporarily carry out the duties of the country’s president, a position that has been vacant since the still-unsolved 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The new transitional council will be composed of seven voting members representing seven sectors of Haitian society, including Henry’s political party. It will also include two nonvoting members, from civil society and the interfaith community, according to a statement from the Caricom regional bloc.

U.S. officials say the goal is to name a replacement prime minister as quickly as possible. But it is unclear how soon the transitional government will be in place, and whether the new leadership will be able to quell the violent gangs controlling an estimated 80 percent of the country’s capital.

For more than a week, Haiti’s all-powerful gangs have terrorized Port-au-Prince, attacking the airport, port, government buildings and at least a dozen of the city’s police stations. The United States this week airlifted its embassy staff out of the country as the crisis deepened. Henry was unable to return to his own country, with the airport shuttered and the neighboring Dominican Republic refusing to allow the prime minister to land on its soil.

Haiti’s most powerful gang leader, former police officer Jimmy Chérizier, also known as “Barbecue,” had threatened civil war unless Henry resigned. On Monday, before the announcement of Henry’s resignation, Chérizier said his coalition of gangs would not accept the new presidential council, either, and he threatened to attack hotels where “the traditional politicians” typically stay. He said the new government should be chosen by his coalition of gangs and “the Haitian people.”

“If the international community continues down this path, it will plunge Haiti into chaos by selecting a small group of traditional politicians, sitting in a hotel, and negotiating who will be president and what the model of government will be,” Chérizier said. “We are having a bloody revolution in the country.”

While the United States initially supported Henry remaining in power to assist in the creation of the council, Henry had shown an unwillingness to hand over power in recent weeks. Washington reversed course, urging him to step down to make way for a transitional council and new prime minister.

“The government I lead cannot remain indifferent to this situation,” Henry said in a video address Monday night from Puerto Rico, where he remained Monday. “Haiti needs peace, stability, sustainable development and to rebuild its democratic institutions.”

Blinken spent much of his time at a Monday meeting in Jamaica working out who exactly would join the transitional council, at one point huddling with other leaders in a corner marking down names on a piece of scrap paper, a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

Through the course of Monday, it became clear to Henry that there was overwhelmingly broad international support in favor of his departure, the official said.

“Throughout these conversations, it became clear that there was a credible deal on the table that was reflective of what we feel is reflective of the will of the Haitian people and reflective of a broad coalition of ideas and people across their democratic spectrum,” the official said.

The council will exclude any individuals who are under indictment or U.N. sanctions, or anyone who has been convicted of a crime, according to the Caricom agreement. Those who oppose a U.N.-backed, Kenya-led security mission to Haiti will also be barred from participating.

The security force deployment remains a work in progress, the U.S. official said, with the precise details of U.S. assistance still under discussion. The State Department is still vetting all of the Kenyan police units that would deploy to Haiti to make sure they have not been involved in human rights violations, which would exclude them from U.S. assistance. A “significant portion” of Kenyan forces have been vetted already, the official said.

At Monday’s meeting, Blinken announced that the United States would commit another $100 million for the force, bringing total U.S. support to $300 million. That total sum will fund equipment, training and logistics for the force that will go into Haiti, the official said, but there is no intention of increasing a U.S. security presence on the ground in the country beyond the force already stationed there permanently to protect the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

Claude Joseph, a Haitian political leader and former interim prime minister involved in Monday’s discussions, said he believes the transitional council should be able to govern before the installment of a Kenyan-led security force.

A fierce Henry critic, he argued for a transition of “reconciliation” and not of vengeance. He encouraged Henry to return to Haiti if he wishes.

He described the council as inclusive, representing diverse groups and political ideologies. But another representative in the Caricom discussions said the proposal made many participants uneasy.

“A council consisting of seven members is too unwieldy when it comes to making decisions,” said the representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. “Hurrying through this process is not in the country’s best interest.”

The 24-hour deadline is an attempt to “hasten this process,” after weeks of delays in establishing the council, said Caribbean diplomat Ronald Sanders, the ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States.

“They’ve been given weeks to come up with the decision,” Sanders said. “The time has now come for you to deliver.”

Georges Michel, a Haitian historian, said Henry “allowed things to linger.”

“As our grandparents used to say, anything left lingering gets dirty,” Michel said. “This presidential council must pacify the country. If they can’t, they’ll be overthrown after four months. With seven members, they’ll likely end up fighting amongst themselves.”

Much will depend on whether the political parties are able to put aside their differences and reach a consensus and on how the gangs and other figures who have been excluded from the council react, said Ivan Briscoe, director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group.

“The gangs at the moment clearly have an extraordinary power of being able to spoil whatever the regional and Haitian political parties hope will be a stable government,” Briscoe said.

Schmidt reported from Bogotá, Colombia, Birnbaum from Washington and Coletta from Toronto.