World IN BRIEF : FRANCE : Communist Leader Marchais to Retire

Georges Marchais, the leader of France’s Communist Party who followed a pro-Moscow line during the Cold War, said he will retire after more than two decades as party chief. “I do not wish to continue as the head of our party after the 28th Congress,” the 73-year-old general secretary said in a letter to the party’s Central Committee. The party congress is scheduled for Jan. 25 to 29. Marchais is hospitalized after recently undergoing a hip operation for arthritis. “I’m feeling my age,” he said in his letter.” Marchais became party leader in 1972.