The UN Security Council is expected to send a 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission to Sudan in February, a UN special envoy said Tuesday.

The main task of the mission is to monitor a permanent ceasefire, UN Special Envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk said, adding military observers will participate in the mission.

"I expect somewhere in the second week of February that the Security Council might give a mandate to the United Nations mission," Pronk told reporters.

The United Nations, which has appealed for 1.5 million US dollars to end a separate war in the western Darfur region, also planned to hold a donors' conference for Sudan in Oslo in April.

Sudan has been locked in a two-decade war, the longest in Africa, leaving at least 1.5 million people dead and four million people fleeing their homes. The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) signed a peace agreement in Kenya on Jan. 9 to end the conflict.

Source: Xinhua