The situation is deteriorating in the western Sudanese region of Darfur and an existing peacekeeping force is too small to deal with it, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday. Last week a joint U.N.-African Union (AU) mission took over peacekeeping in Darfur from a purely AU force, seeking to end almost five years of fighting. But the swapping of green AU berets for U.N. blue ones is unlikely to bring rapid change. "I as the secretary-general and the United Nations as a whole ... must ensure the rapid deployment of hybrid operations as agreed to the level of 26,000 (peacekeepers) as soon as possible," Ban told reporters at his first news conference of 2008. "We have now 9,000 re-hatted soldiers in Darfur. That's not sufficient. That is why we are very concerned about the ongoing deteriorating situation in Darfur." The so-called hybrid force of AU and U.N. troops replaces a struggling AU mission. The plan is for it ultimately to comprise 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 police, but only a little over a third of those are so far in place. Ban said he spoke by telephone with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week and planned to meet with him in person at an upcoming AU summit in Addis Ababa. Bashir has opposed non-African troops, delayed allocating land to the force, demanded the right to disable the mission's communications during "security operations" and refused night flights. Ban made it clear that the international community, too, must help the deployment by providing necessary helicopters and other heavy transport vehicles seen as vital for the mission to function effectively in a region the size of France.