Camel cxfrs RESTful client / ProducerTemplate ConnectionTimeout

I am trying to set the 'connectionTimeout' for a Camel CXF-RS component here which produces a RESTful requests on a 3rd party service. The default 30000 miliseconds is to long.

Exchange exchange = template.send("cxfrs://" + url, new Processor() {
 public void process(Exchange exchange) throws Exception {
  exchange.setPattern(ExchangePattern.InOut);
  Message inMessage = exchange.getIn();
  setupDestinationURL(inMessage);
  // using the http central client API
  inMessage.setHeader(CxfConstants.CAMEL_CXF_RS_USING_HTTP_API, Boolean.TRUE);
  // set the Http method
  inMessage.setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_METHOD, "PUT");
  // set the relative path
  inMessage.setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_PATH, url);                
  // Specify the response class , cxfrs will use InputStream as the response                 object type 
  inMessage.setHeader(CxfConstants.CAMEL_CXF_RS_RESPONSE_CLASS, Customer.class);
  // set a customer header
  inMessage.setHeader("key", "value");
  // since we use the Get method, so we don't need to set the message body
  inMessage.setBody(null);                
 }
});

I have tried adding this to our application-context as many have suggested, but cannot see it modifying the default values when debugging through the HTTPConduit and HTTPClientPolicy classes:

<http-conf:conduit name="*.http-conduit">
  <http-conf:client ConnectionTimeout="5000"/>
</http-conf:conduit>

and I have tried appending

 "?httpClientAPI=true&connectionTimeout=5000" 

as options to the url string.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.