Senegal-politics Outgoing Senegalese team must not touch till: president-elect DAKAR, March 24 (AFP) - Senegalese President-elect Abdoulaye Wade warned civil servants and outgoing officials to keep their hands off national assets and finance ministry archives, in an interview published Friday. He also asked ministers not to leave the country until his government took over. Wade - whose inauguration is on April 1 - condemned chronic capital flight and asked the country's customs director to fight illegal financial transfers, the daily Wal Fadjri reported. He also expressed the wish that ministers and directors of state services who manage national assets "do not leave the Senegalese territory pending installation of the new government". Wade slammed several state-run companies such as Dakar's port authority, the national railways, and the state-run lottery, "which quickly signed long term contracts with suppliers in order to receive their commissions." The practices "will not be tolerated," he declared, warning directors "they had better put their houses in order before passing control over to their successors." "I will be absolutely intransigent," he said. Some archives, he said, "notably of certain state-run companies, the treasury and services which depend on the finance ministry," had been burned in an attempt to destroy evidence of wrongdoing. The justice department would be asked to investigate these cases, Wade added. In another interview with the daily Sud, he indicated that Senegalese political leaders who had supported his campaign would be represented in the future government. Former foreign minister and a dissident from the outgoing Socialist Party, Moustapha Niasse, will be named prime minister, Wade confirmed. A coalition that supported Niasse for president would also be included in the government, the president-elect said. Niasse told AFP Friday that one of his government's priorities will be to carry out an audit of the public finances. The cabinet, which he said would be announced on April 3 or 4, "would first carry out an impartial, transparent, and objective audit of the state's accounts in order to determine the exact financial and economic situation." Wade also asked outgoing President Abdou Diouf, his long-standing rival in a political contest of and nine years his junior -- at 65 -- to represent him as envoy to the Europe-Africa summit in Cairo in April. The incoming Senegalese president also won wide respect this week by paying a visit to his predecessor's 85-year-old mother in the northern town of Louga. Wade and Diouf touched Senegalese hearts Thursday when they embraced on the steps of the presidential palace as young supporters of the incoming leader chanted his campaign slogan: "Sopi, sopi" (change). kd/wai/nb ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------