Paul Laurent; French Communist Party Official

Paul Laurent, 65, a senior official of the French Communist Party. Laurent was secretary of the party’s Central Committee, a member of its Political Bureau and a close ally of party leader Georges Marchais. He also was one of three Communists on the Paris City Council. Last year, he led the Communists in negotiations with the governing Socialists to coordinate leftist candidacies in municipal elections. Laurent joined the Communist Party at age 20. He headed the French Communist youth movement from 1954 to 1962, and like many French Communist leaders during the Cold War, was unquestioningly faithful to Moscow and had difficulty adapting to less traditional Soviet policies. Communist Party candidates now receive less than 10% of votes in French elections, compared with double that figure in the immediate postwar years. In Paris on Sunday of cancer.