Wed Mar 7, 2007 8:43 AM GMT15

DAKAR (Reuters) - Senegal will hold long-delayed legislative elections on June 3, the government said on Tuesday, with newly reelected President Abdoulaye Wade hoping to maintain his parliamentary majority.

"The legislative elections are fixed for June 3, 2007," Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom told a news conference in the capital Dakar.

The polls were originally set for May 2006, but Wade pushed them back in 2005 after Senegal’s worst rains in decades destroyed thousands of homes. He said the postponement would save money which could be used to aid flood victims.

The opposition accused him of trying to buy time because he feared he would lose his parliamentary majority.

The polls were postponed for a second time in January after the West African country’s constitutional court upheld an opposition appeal against a decree from Wade which had altered the way in which parliamentary seats were shared out.

Wade won a comfortable first-round victory in presidential polls on February 25 with 56 percent of votes, nearly four times as much as his nearest rival.

But the opposition Socialist party lodged an appeal with the constitutional court on Monday calling for the annulment of the polls because of what it called voting irregularities.

The president, who is in his 80s and has ruled since 2000, has credited his victory to strong support in rural areas which he said were ignored by the opposition.

Monitors from West Africa’s regional organisation ECOWAS said the vote was sufficiently free and fair, although Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres said state media gave Wade and his campaign overwhelming coverage.