AN MP has urged the chief executive of Corus to meet with the head of a consortium which pulled out of a steel deal, putting 3,000 North-East jobs at risk.

Vera Baird, MP for Redcar today wrote to Corus boss Kirby Adams urging him to meet her to discuss arranging fresh negotiations with the consortium of four international companies.

Mrs Baird met Antonio Marcegaglia, head of Italian firm Marcegaglia in Mantua, Italy last Friday to outline the potential consequences for workers at Corus Teesside Cast Products (TCP), in her Redcar constituency.

Marcegaglia is part of the consortium which earlier this month tore up a ten-year "offtake agreement" signed in 2004 to take nearly 78 per cent of the Corus plant's output.

Mr Marcegaglia, told the MP he was willing to work with his consortium partners and Corus to find a way of preserving production at the plant and has since followed that up with a letter to Mrs Baird.

She said: "Since Kirby Adams expressed himself to be 'delighted' that I was going to Italy to talk with the consortium, I am confident that he will be constructive.

"I have today written to him with some feedback from our visit and have sought strongly to make the following point."

She then quoted from her letter, stating "I think it is clear that the court will not enforce the offtake agreement through positive injunction and that all that a victory can produce is therefore an amount of damages at some time in the future. If the situation is allowed to be that relations have so broken down that only legal steps can follow rather than a commercial solution, by taking that position the parties will betray the people of Teesside who need to have work."

In January, Marcegaglia and fellow consortium member Dongkuk Steel, of Korea, signed a memorandum of understanding to buy a majority stake in TCP.

Corus cannot open discussions with other potential purchasers until the two firms decide whether they intend to continue with those plans.