Leader attentive appearing in papers? On the contrary! (9)
I believe the answer is:
president
'leader' is the definition.
(type of leader)
'papers? on the contrary' is the wordplay.
'papers?' becomes 'ID' (short for identification papers).
'on' is an insertion indicator.
'the contrary' becomes 'present' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'id' placed inside 'present' is 'PRESIDENT'.
'attentive appearing in' is the link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for president that I've seen before include "American leader" , "Celebrant" , "Head of college" , "top job" , "Republic's head" .)