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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Former military dictator Leopoldo F. Galtieri, who in 1982 led Argentina into the Falkland Islands war against Britain then after his rule was prosecuted for human rights abuses under the regime, died Sunday. He was 76. Galtieri, who suffered from pancreatic cancer, was admitted Saturday to the Central Military Hospital in Buenos Aires. He died of heart failure, hospital officials said Sunday. The general became president in November 1981, the third of four presidents under the iron-fisted military regime that came to power in 1976. With the Argentine economy faltering, Galtieri tried to tried to rally popular support for the regime by ordering Argentine troops to invade the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982, saying Argentina had inherited the British territory from Spain. A 78-day war followed, during which more than 700 Argentines and 255 British were killed in and around the islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. After Argentina was defeated, the military forced Galtieri to resign in June 1982. The swift Argentine defeat hastened the fall of the military dictatorship and the restoration of democracy, prompting a still unresolved process of how to prosecute the military for their alleged abuses. For years, Galtieri lived in virtual seclusion in a Buenos Aires suburb before a federal judge indicted him last year and ordered him placed under house arrest for allegedly taking part in the abduction, torture and execution of 20 leftist guerillas during the military dictatorship. His case was the latest in a renewed effort by Argentine human rights groups to bring the former junta leaders to justice for alleged human rights abuses during the so-called Dirty War. Galtieri was charged along with 42 other military and state security officials accused of widespread atrocities, including allegedly kidnapping and arranging the adoption of children whose mothers disappeared during the military rule. Some 9,000 leftist dissidents were reported a