-- Seeking to prod the IRA into ordering a prolonged cease-fire, Northern Ireland's police chief said Thursday that Britain would respond to such a truce by quickly cutting the number of troops on the streets.


"If the threat was to tail down, then the level of overt army patrolling on the streets could be tailed down," Sir Hugh Annesley, chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or RUCtold BBC radio.


He ruled out a complete withdrawal of British troops, which now number 18,000, as "naive" but said the armed presence that has turned daily life into a state of siege could be scaled down if the police were "no longer being rocketed and bombed on a daily basis."


Annesley's remarks coincided with renewed speculation that the Irish Republican Army might shortly announce an unprecedented halt to its campaign to end British rule and to reunite the province with the Irish Republic.


Such speculation has increased with the anniversary this Sunday of the deployment of British troops a quarter of a century ago to protect police trying to quell civil unrest and IRA attacks on police and government targets.


Their deployment heralded the start of the Troubles, as Northern Ireland's political and sectarian strife is known, making the province's 1.5 million people hostage to rival groups of guerrillas.


Republican sources said the IRA was actively discussing an extended truce to wring concessions from Britain on an Anglo-Irish peace plan for the province. The IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, says the plan as it now stands is not radical enough for its members to accept.


Ken Maginnis of the mainstream Protestant group the Ulster Unionist Party said Annesley's remarks were tantamount to negotiation with the IRA and called on him to resign as head of the 12,000-strong armed police force.


"He has given the IRA its biggest boost of the past 12 months by offering to 'tail down,'" Maginnis said, "and the courageous men and women (of the RUC) will feel humiliated."