GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) -- Guatemalan voters on Sunday rejected
                  constitutional reforms that would have granted equal rights to the country's
                  Maya Indian majority and curtailed army power in the country's first elections
                  since a 36-year-long civil war ended in 1996.

                  In what analysts called a severe blow to Guatemala's peace process, partial
                  results from 21 of Guatemala's 22 provinces showed voters rejecting by a
                  2-to-1 margin a package of constitutional reforms aimed at rectifying some of
                  the underlying causes of the war.

                  Electoral officials said voter turnout was running at only about 18.4 percent of
                  the 4 million registered voters in this Central America country of 11 million.
                  No violence was reported.

                  The reforms would have recognised the rights of Guatemala's indigenous
                  majority for the first time since Europeans arrived here in the 16th century.

                  Guatemalans also were asked whether to overhaul the executive, legislative
                  and judicial branches, and to reshape the Guatemalan army, which was
                  blamed by a U.N.-monitored truth commission for committing 93 percent of
                  the massacres, tortures, disappearances and assassinations during the
                  country's civil war.

                  A "yes" vote would have allowed for a civilian rather than a military defence
                  minister and eliminated a covert military intelligence unit.

                  The referendum was divided into four questions, and of the four, the widest
                  margin showed the "no" vote ahead 68 percent to 26 percent, or 153,938 votes
                  to 58,055, on whether to reorganize the legislature.

                  The closest vote of the four showed "no" ahead 63 percent to 31 percent, or
                  144,491 to 72,461, on granting Indian rights.

                  In a moral victory for backers of the reforms, the "yes" vote led in heavily
                  Indian provinces like Quiche and Alta Verapaz, which bore the brunt of
                  wartime violence.

                  "We recognise democracy," Nineth Montenegro, a congresswoman for
                  Guatemala's main leftist party and backer of the "yes" vote, said in conceding
                  defeat.

                  "But this is a tremendously conservative country," she said. "Once again, the
                  racism of Guatemala has been exposed."

                  Backers of the "no" side said the results supported their call for reforming the
                  constitution through a constituent assembly rather than a popular vote. They
                  also warned that the reforms would have created a two-tiered legal system
                  prone to reverse discrimination.

                  "This confirms our beliefs that the reforms can only be carried out by calling a
                  constitutional assembly," Francisco Bianchi, the leader of the conservative
                  Alliance for Democratic Reconciliation party (ARDE), told Reuters.

                  The "no" side also said Guatemalans had spoken by giving low marks to the
                  political parties that engineered the peace process.

                  The referendum was the first nationwide election since the government and
                  Marxist guerrillas signed a peace accord in 1996 to end the war, which killed
                  an estimated 200,000 people, most of them civilians.

                  The reforms were approved by Congress under a 1996 peace accord between
                  the government of President Alvaro Arzu and the Guatemalan National
                  Revolutionary Unit (URNG), the former guerrillas now registered as a political
                  party.

                  Supporters of the "yes" vote -- they included all of Guatemala's main political
                  parties -- said the outcome would reopen the wounds of Guatemala's bloody
                  past by preserving the Mayans' status as second-class citizens.

                  "This means we are returning to the past," said Alvaro Colom, presidential
                  candidate for the left-of centre coalition Alliance For the New Nation (ANN).

                     Copyright 1999 Reuters.