CNN's Amanpour: this has been the most difficult of decisions

By Kristi E. Swartz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Leaving CNN, a cable network she's known since 1983, for ABC News has been "the most difficult of decisions," Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour told her colleagues in a letter.

Atlanta-based CNN confirmed Thursday longtime rumors that Amanpour will leave at the end of April.

She will become the host of “This Week,” ABC's Sunday morning political talk show, starting in August.

"This rare chance to take international news to a broader base here in the United States is one that I felt I could not turn down. I will take everything I have learned, and loved, here at CNN and put it into action!" Amanpour wrote in a letter, obtained by media industry blog TVNewser.

"This has been the most difficult of decisions. I am simply taking the next challenging and difficult but exciting step," she wrote.

CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton acknowledged ongoing media speculation in a staff memo, saying the network had "reserved comment until now, when we all agree that the time is right to share her plans."

"Over the years, Christiane and I have talked about her professional goals and personal interests, and more recently about the excitement of a new opportunity at this point in her career," Walton said in his memo, sent out Thursday.

Amanpour anchored a half-hour daily interview show -- called Amanpour -- on CNN International. She is based in New York.

In his memo, Walton said the cable news network would announce changes to CNNI programming in the coming weeks.

Amanpour joined CNN in 1983. She was a New York correspondent and later became an international correspondent.

She was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Amanpour perhaps was known best, however, for her first major assignment: covering the Gulf War.