Mobile phone firm Orange last night gave a cast-iron guarantee that North-East workers were safe in their jobs despite an announcement that 1,000 further jobs were to go.

The group lost its chief executive yesterday as it announced it was to cut back on its 30,000-strong staff employed across 21 countries - 5,000 of whom are in the North-East.

Orange, controlled by struggling French telecoms company France Telecom, said the cuts would be made during the coming 12 months.

Jean-Francois Pontal, appointed chief executive in April, announced he would step down.

An Orange spokeswoman last night said there was "a million to one chance" that any of the current raft of redundancies would come from plants in Darlington, Peterlee or North Tyneside.

The company confirmed last month that 66 jobs were to go from the North-East.

The move was part of a dedicated slimming exercise of the UK operations to cut costs and improve profits.

The spokeswoman said: "We are more or less where we want to be in the UK in terms of employment."

The group said the cuts, which are expected to affect mainland Europe, would help "accelerate" its financial performance and lower spending by 3bn euros (£1.9bn) between next year and 2005.

Orange's deputy chief executive Graham Howe refuted suggestions the group's cost cuts were a reaction to France Telecom's problems.

He said: "Clearly we have done our review in conjunction with France Telecom but we are talking about things that have been plan-ned within Orange for some time."

But he added that the roll-out of 3G phones outside the UK would be delayed with spending concentrated on supporting current services.

A "soft-launch" of 3G in the UK will take place next year with the full commercial launch taking place by the middle of 2004.

Mr Howe said: "We want to learn from the UK and we don't see this impacting our performance."

Orange added the successful take-up of 2.5G phone services such as picture messaging was leading to higher earnings.

Mr Howe is seen as a favourite to take over from Mr Pontal when he retires in the spring, alongside Didier Quillot, the head of Orange in France.

At the close of play, shares in Orange were up 20p to 465p.