INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONFUSION OVER HOSTAGES

THE 52 US HOSTAGES still held in Iran must, if they have access to the media, be apprehensive over the attitudes that Reagan's new administration might adopt on the issue of their plight. It has been almost 450 days since the frenzied Iranian students took the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979. Dubbed "a nest of spies" by the revolutionary students, the Embassy was surrounded by a screaming mob and within an hour the huge compound was in their control