The World - News from June 23, 1989

Celebrated novelist Mario Vargas Llosa says he is bowing out of the presidential race in Peru, blaming political wrangling within the center-right coalition that has been backing him. Vargas Llosa, 53, the front-runner for March, 1990, elections and one of Latin America’s leading writers, made his decision known in a letter to leaders of the two principal parties that make up his Democratic Front coalition. Vargas Llosa said he is withdrawing because of wrangling between former President Fernando Belaunde Terry of the Popular Action Party and Luis Bedoya Reyes of the Popular Christian Party, a former mayor of Lima.