African forces should be fully deployed to Sudan's troubled Darfur region by the end of the year despite some delays in building the infrastructure to house them, the new head of the African Union mission said on Saturday. On his arrival in Sudan, mission chief Baba Gana Kingibe said that a joint declaration of principles should be signed within the first two weeks of Darfur peace talks, due to reconvene in the Nigerian capital Abuja around Dec. 10. "We expect that before long within a week or two the declaration of principles which was negotiated and largely agreed upon will be finalised and signed," Kingibe, a former Nigerian foreign minister, told reporters in Khartoum. "We believe that early in the new year we will be making a robust approach towards inching to a final peace deal." The African Union has been slowly increasing its force in remote Darfur towards a 3,300-strong contingent with a stronger mandate which includes monitoring a shaky April ceasefire, monitoring Sudanese police and limited powers to protect civilians, but Kingibe said the slow progress was not because of lack of funding or difficulties in finding suitable troops. "It is better that we synchronise the deployment of the troops to the availability of facilities on the ground. We are working on how we can speed up the provision of infrastructure on the ground to the deployment of the troops," he said. "I think that by Dec. 15 we should have quite a number of troops in. By the end of December we should have all the complements of the troops on the ground," he said.
