Guatemalan Leader Sides With Army Over U.S. : Central America: A president dependent on his military appears headed for conflict with Washington over slayings.

Rallying to the defense of an army accused of political murder and ties to the CIA, the Guatemalan government appears to be on a collision course with the United States.

President Ramiro de Leon Carpio, a former human rights ombudsman who until recently enjoyed enthusiastic U.S. support, is resisting calls from Washington to act on charges that a senior officer, while on the CIA’s payroll, was involved in the killings of a U.S. citizen and a leftist guerrilla married to an American.

The revelations and allegations have forced an international re-examination of the well-known but little-discussed role of the CIA in Guatemala, where the longest guerrilla war in Central America and the tactics of a brutal military have claimed tens of thousands of lives.

And the increased scrutiny appears to have deepened divisions within the army over how to deal with its long history of corruption--and intensified a growing climate of instability in a country with scant democratic tradition.

Risking a costly showdown with Washington, De Leon has closed ranks with the Guatemalan army over accusations that Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a paid informant of the CIA, was involved in the 1990 killing of innkeeper Michael DeVine, a U.S. citizen, and the death of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a leftist guerrilla who was allegedly captured alive by the army in March, 1992.

De Leon has suggested that Alpirez sue Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), who first publicly voiced accusations that the colonel ordered the killings while in the pay of the CIA.

De Leon’s stance flies in the face of the U.S. government’s position, which concurs with press revelations that Alpirez was involved in DeVine’s killing while the colonel headed a jungle base close to the innkeeper’s home.

“The embassy identified Alpirez early on as having knowledge of the murder after the fact,” said a U.S. Embassy spokesman here. “He was suspected of participating in a cover-up along with other senior military officers.”

On Feb. 6, the U.S. government told De Leon that Alpirez almost certainly had direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Bamaca’s fate.

Another guerrilla combatant who escaped from the base had previously given testimony that he saw Alpirez overseeing the torture of Bamaca, who was married to Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-educated U.S. lawyer.

De Leon’s rallying behind Alpirez followed reports of unrest within the military and rumors that a coup was afoot.

The army--reportedly eager to avoid the precedent that would be set should Alpirez be brought to trial--appears to be in no mood to budge. Senior officers are said to believe they will be able to ride out the storm that has brewed in Washington, where the focus has been on the accountability of the CIA.

Although De Leon earlier this month offered to examine information from U.S. officials in an effort to air charges of atrocities, few analysts here expect a real probe.

Only one Guatemalan officer has ever been convicted in a human rights-related killing. Capt. Hugo Contreras, who was given a 20-year term for his role in the DeVine murder, escaped from military custody in May, 1993, on the day his sentence was announced.

“The army’s concern has been to avoid a chain reaction--to never clarify human rights cases, because one case will lead to another,” said Gabriel Aguilera, a political scientist who has studied the military.

U.S. Embassy officials have expressed concern about the president’s uncompromising tone, which underlies his apparent inability to persuade an army suspected of thousands of human rights violations to deliver one colonel.

“We need credible, thorough investigation on these cases,” embassy spokesman John Roney said.

But prospects are slim that the reform-minded wing of the army--headed by the defense minister and the president’s chief of military staff--will serve up the colonel to placate the United States. “Everybody has something on everybody else when it comes to human rights,” one analyst said.

The chief of military staff, Col. Otto Perez, was the head of military intelligence when Bamaca was allegedly detained and killed, and it seems unlikely that he would have no knowledge of the incident. Perez is the military man closest to De Leon.

The latest spat is expected to increase pressure on the Clinton Administration to suspend Guatemala’s preferential trade status, which would affect about $200 million worth of the country’s exports. Last month, the U.S. government cut off its remaining military aid to Guatemala to protest the lack of progress in a number of human rights cases.

But De Leon, named president by Congress in June, 1993, to put an end to a dizzying crisis of coups and countercoups, faces a dilemma. He is being asked to clean up the institution that has provided the crutches for his weak presidency, which had neither a political party nor any other natural constituency.

His government has lost the confidence of Guatemala’s powerful agricultural sector, which is infuriated that a harder line has not been taken to evict landless peasants who have invaded dozens of farms in recent months. Many of the incursions resulted from desperation among peasants at the refusal of their bosses to pay the minimum wage, equivalent to $2.50 a day.

The government is also confronted by the private sector’s resistance to recent tax reforms designed to increase the tax burden from 6.7% to 8.5% of gross domestic product, or GDP. Failure to carry out the tax reforms would jeopardize loans from the International Monetary Fund and other lending institutions.

The scandal of the last few weeks has obscured a breakthrough in peace talks between the government and left-wing guerrillas, who reached agreement March 31 in Mexico City on the rights of Guatemala’s majority indigenous peoples.

The accord recognizes racial discrimination as an offense and obliges the government to promote constitutional reforms and afford official status to the principal indigenous languages.

But few observers believe that the two sides will meet a U.N. deadline to sign a peace agreement by August, before presidential elections expected in November. The guerrillas would have no guarantee that a future president and new Congress would ratify the current government’s commitments, observers say.