This Day In 1970's History: Friday January 16, 1981
- Terms of a final agreement with Iran were drafted by the United States, and officials said if it was accepted the release of American hostages could come as early as Sunday. Iran said it presented "no obstacle" to concluding an agreement permitting the release of the hostages. Executive Affairs Minister Behzad Nabavi no longer demanded, as he did Thursday, that the United States start transferring frozen Iranian assets to Algeria by the "end of working hours" today. "Only the real willingness of Washington can bring decisive results today," he said. [New York Times]
- The return of frozen Iranian assets in the United States, a key part of a hostage release agreement, set off a day of frenzied international banking activity. President Carter ordered an exchange of more than $900 million in gold with Britain so that the United States would have gold in the Bank of England for ultimate transfer to Iran. He also ordered liquidation of Iranian-owned Treasury securities in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for an ultimate electronic transfer.
American and British experts in law and finance went to Algeria to tackle the remaining problems in the hostage release agreement, which was believed blocked only by new technical complications arising from an Iranian proposal. Five American and three British experts went to Algiers. [New York Times]
- "Serious national problems" were outlined by President Carter in a final State of the Union Message to Congress. Among the most pressing were unemployment and inflation rates that are "unacceptably high" and an increasingly tight world oil market. Mr. Carter also drew attention to what he described as a continuing Soviet threat to Poland. [New York Times]
- President Carter said he disagreed with a presidential commission's recommendation that the government encourage a migration from Northern industrial cities to the South and West. He expressed his views after accepting a final copy of the report of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the 80's, which he appointed in 1979. [New York Times]
- The informer who delayed a vote on the confirmation in the Senate of Raymond Donovan, Secretary of Labor-designate in the Reagan administration, was identified by law enforcement sources in New Jersey and Washington as Ralph Picardo. He reportedly told investigators for the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee that, to buy labor peace from a Teamsters local, Mr. Donovan made payments to him in 1967 and 1968 on behalf of the Schiavone Construction Company of Secaucus, N.J. [New York Times]
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