By Gabriela Matthews

MONROVIA, March 31 (Reuters) - Liberia needs more long-term foreign investment and help reforming its security and judicial sectors if it is to recover fully from civil war, the head of the United Nations mission in the country said.

U.N. Special Representative in Liberia Alan Doss said President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had made progress, but her government needed continued international support.

On Friday, the U.N. Security Council extended the stay of the 15,000-strong peacekeeping mission -- in place since a 2003 ceasefire -- for six months but asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to present a gradual troop withdrawal plan in June.

"We've seen progress but these are really early days," Doss told Reuters television in an interview late on Friday.

"When you think this country has massive, massive problems to overcome, the inheritance of 25 years of instability and violence, that's not going to be done in a few months."

He said that besides security, vital issues included restoring the justice system, dealing with human rights abuses, strengthening police and jumpstarting the economy.

He declined to comment directly on how much longer he thought the mission should remain in Liberia, saying that was a matter for the Security Council to decide.

The U.N. force was deployed in Liberia to help implement the ceasefire after a 14-year civil war which killed more than 200,000 people and drove more than a million from their homes.

ECONOMIC DECLINE

Africa's oldest independent republic was once one of the region's more prosperous states with its vast reserves of iron ore and rubber. But average annual incomes have fallen to just $130 per person since the war.

Squatters still live in the burned-out concrete shells of government buildings in Monrovia and most of the city is without running water after looters tore its infrastructure apart. Unemployment is rife, particularly among former child soldiers.

Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist dubbed the "Iron Lady", has made progress fighting corruption and trying to get the economy back on its feet since being sworn in as Africa's first elected female head of state in January 2006.

She renegotiated a 25-year deal with Arcelor Mittal <MTP.PA> <CELR.PA> in December that ensured the Liberian state retained control of a key port and railway and raised the projected $900 million investment by a further $100 million.

Doss welcomed the revised deal, saying it would help restore basic infrastructure, but said work needed to be done to attract more foreign investors.

"That does mean security, but it means other things: a trained labour force, dealing with the problems of infrastructure, dealing with the problem of corruption and mismanagement," he said.

"Nobody wants to come to a country where they think they are going to be subject to arbitrary arrest, to corrupt practices."

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