By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The Security Council extended the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Liberia for another year on Thursday, but began a drawdown in response to the country's gradual recovery from a 14-year civil war.

A unanimously adopted resolution said the more than 14,000 troops in the UNMIL force in the West African state should be reduced by 2,450 by the time the renewed mandate expires on Sept. 30, 2008.

The cut would be the first stage in a reduction of 5,000 that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants by 2010. The resolution asked Ban to recommend any second-stage cutback by next August.

UNMIL also includes nearly 1,200 police. The Security Council endorsed Ban's recommendation that their number should go down by nearly 500 between next year and 2010.

The U.N. force was sent to the country, originally founded by freed American slaves, when its civil war ended in 2003.

Ban said in a report last month the two-year-old government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had made great strides in consolidating peace and promoting economic recovery, especially in timber and diamonds, where sanctions had been lifted. Liberia's economy grew 7.9 percent last year.

"Sufficient progress has been made in the implementation of (UNMIL's) mandate and in stabilizing the security situation in the country to allow for" troop and police reductions, the report said.

Thursday's resolution, however, noted "significant challenges" remaining in consolidating state authority, meeting development and reconstruction needs, reforming the judiciary, extending the rule of law and developing security forces.

Ban has said it is too early to say when to withdraw the entire peacekeeping force, which would depend on the state of the domestic police and army in Liberia, beset by years of large-scale corruption and warfare across the region.

The precariousness of Liberia's recovery was underscored this year when the government foiled a coup plot by a former army chief.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president and warlord, is on trial in the Netherlands, accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation in a quest for diamonds in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor's trial is being conducted by a special Sierra Leone court.

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