Participants at a Davos forum said Jordan criticized US forces for targeting Al-Jazeera reporters in particular. (Courtesy CNN)

WASHINGTON, February 12 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan quit on Friday, February 11, over remarks he made at last month's World Economic Forum in Davos in which he accused US forces of targeting journalists in Iraq.

“After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq,” Jordan said in a letter to colleagues posted on the Web site of the all-news American network.

The resignation sent shock waves through CNN because Jordan has been long admired by his peers, from executives to the rank-and-file.

Jordan joined CNN as an assistant assignment editor in 1982 and rose through the ranks to become CNN's chief news executive.

The controversy gained steam last week, with Internet bloggers posting their accounts of what transpired at the Switzerland forum, an event attended by political, economic, academic and media figures from around the world, CNN said.

The Davos organizers have said the session, like most at the forum, was off-the-record, and they have refused to release a transcript to preserve their commitment.

Al-Jazeera Targeted

Several participants at the event said Jordan told the audience that US forces had deliberately targeted journalists.

Lamis Awad, a Tunisian journalist who attended the event, said Jordan criticized the US forces for targeting reporters working for Al-Jazeera news channel in particular.

“The US administration would not allow any journalist working in a heavyweight American channel like CNN to publicly criticize its policies in Iraq,” she told the Doha-based broadcaster commenting on the resignation.

In his letter, Jordan tried to explain that some journalists were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and were struck by a bomb, while others died because American occupation forces mistook them for the enemy.

“While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the US military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that US military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists, my comments on this subject in a World Economic Forum panel discussion were not as clear as they should have been,” Jordan said.

On April 8, 2003, US forces hit with missiles Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad, killing its correspondent Tariq Ayyoub just a few hours before rolling into the capital.

The channel officials charged the missile attack was a “deliberate” strike, recalling that Al-Jazeera office in Afghanistan had been hit in November 2001 during the US-led assault.

On April 9, 2004, the United States asked Al-Jazeera team to leave Fallujah after the channel aired footages showing the American forces violating a ceasefire in the western Baghdad city.

The US-allied interim Iraqi government has extended in September the closure of Al-Jazeera office in Iraq indefinitely.

That has drawn condemnation from media watchdogs, including Reporters without Borders and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which accused the interim government of violating press freedom.

Known for its quality programs, Al-Jazeera – nicknamed “the CNN of the Arab world” - is the most-watched channel in the Arab world.

The station’s officials plan the launch of an English satellite TV by the end of this year. It already has a sports channel and plans to also start up a documentary channel and another for children in 2005.

Launched in 1996, Al-Jazeera ranked the fifth most influential global brand in an annual survey by Brandchannel.com.