Looking Homeward for CNN : Television: Iranian-born correspondent Christiane Amanpour provides a dramatic picture of events relating to the Kurdish crisis.

When a busload of foreign journalists finally reached the pass at the summit of the Iran-Iraq border after a grinding two-day haul, they were struck by the sight of Cable News Network technicians setting up a satellite up-link--under the admiring gaze of CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

As the long, grim line of Kurdish refugees filed slowly past, she worked with cameramen as CNN engineer Nick Robertson, laboring with a screwdriver, put the finishing touches on the portable dish transmitter, with which fellow reporter Jim Clancy also was assisting.

“This is the first time anyone has ever broadcast live by satellite from the scene in Iran,” Amanpour asserted. “Naturally we’re very excited about it.”

For her, the occasion was doubly satisfying: In addition to accomplishing a television first, she was returning to her native land to broadcast a story as dramatic in its own way as her highly regarded reports from Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the Persian Gulf conflict.

“I feel deeply emotional about coming back,” she said, taking a break from her broadcast chores. “My first trip back in 12 years was last February. I was quite nervous at the time, not knowing what to expect. But I really wanted to come back to report from Iran.

“Now for the first time, we have this up-link connection live. And seeing these Kurdish people along the road has really brought tears to my eyes. You can’t help being terribly moved here by the scale of human suffering.”

Amanpour was born 33 years ago in Tehran, the daughter of an Iranian father and English mother. She learned English and Farsi in local schools.

In 1980, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, her parents decided to move to England, where she furthered her education before leaving for the United States to attend the University of Rhode Island. After college, she joined CNN in Atlanta in September, 1983, as an assistant on the foreign desk, moving only slowly up through the ranks.

She ultimately landed a job in a foreign bureau in Frankfurt, Germany, last year.

But hardly had she arrived when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2.

Since then, she hasn’t looked back, arriving with a CNN crew in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 16--and broadcasting live almost any hour of the day and night, given the time differential and CNN’s round-the-clock coverage.

In Saudi Arabia, her unflustered, straight-forward reporting of a complex political and military story won her widespread praise from professional colleagues. And unlike some network prima donnas, she maintains a pleasant, unassuming role off-camera.

With her slight but distinctive accent, she provided a lucid picture of running events during the war, including trips to the front and warships at sea. She managed to avoid the waffling and windiness that sometimes afflicts TV correspondents who are required to fill long patches of air time with nothing much to report.

She wound up in Baghdad, assisting her redoubtable CNN colleague Peter Arnett, and provided her usual, cool appraisal of the Iraqi scene.

To cover the current Kurdish crisis, the CNN team landed in Tehran on a Saturday and loaded their gear, satellite dish, batteries, generator and assorted electronics into a two-ton truck, with the personnel scrambling into four patrol vehicles.

The coast was cleared with a high-level approval from the Iranian Broadcasting Ministry, and the convoy rolled off, with the crews overnighting and sleeping in their vehicles in the mountain town of Paveh. Rising at dawn, they completed the winding, straining, two-hour uphill climb to the pass at the Iran-Iraq border. They taped along the way and at the frontier.

“It’s really been a heroic logistical effort, to get all this stuff up here,” said Amanpour, who dressed for the mountain weather and Islamic customs by donning a blue anorak over yellow slacks and a discreet scarf over her jet black hair. “We only hope we can help these people by calling attention to what’s going on. It’s an enormously important story and we all feel deeply about it.”

When she finishes her current assignment, Amanpour will have no Frankfurt base to return to--CNN has closed that bureau. So she will shift to Paris. From there, she will range widely through Europe and the Middle East.

As for her work, Amanpour explained: “I take my job really seriously. CNN is in a position of great responsibility to our viewers. For me, TV journalism is not show business. If I am comfortable in front of a camera, it is because I try to make it my business to know as much as I can about a story. That makes me feel confident.”