BAGHDAD, Nov 5: Iraq will hold national elections on Jan. 27 to decide its political destiny, Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari said on Friday.

"Bar a catastrophe, the elections will be held on this date. There is total agreement that they are a must for a stable and sovereign Iraq," Jaafari, who also heads the Shi'ite al-Dawa party, told Reuters.

"There is no justification for using violence and killing civilians to reach power. Those who want power can contest the polls," he said, referring to Sunni insurgents in the city of Fallujah facing an impending US offensive.

Iraq's election commission set the Jan. 27 date, which is expected to be approved by the cabinet, Jaafari said. The elections could bring the Shi'ite Muslim majority to power for the first time.

That prospect could worry secular Iraqis and the Arab Sunni minority, who have held power since Western powers carved Iraq out of the remnants of the Ottoman empire in the 1920s.

Jaafari said that although Shi'ite religious parties such as Al-Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq could dominate the elections, any new parliament would function according to national principles.

"We want to transcend sectarianism. We are the heirs of Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr, who was the embodiment of Iraq," he said, referring to his party's founder. Saddam Hussein executed Sadr along with his sister in 1980. Sadr, the uncle of anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was a widely respected theologian who advocated democracy and the rule of law. -Reuters