The leaders of Scotland’s two main churches, the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church in Scotland, have appealed to the Government to do more to support veterans who became seriously ill following service in the 1991 Gulf War.
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. David Lacy, and the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of the servicemen and women who contracted the mysterious illness dubbed the “Gulf War Syndrome”.The church leaders also wrote to all Scottish MPs and MSPs calling on them to “bring closure” to this “unhappy state of affairs”, almost a year after an independent inquiry determined that thousands of UK Gulf War veterans had suffered illness, reports the BBC.
The Government continues to deny any acknowledgement of the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, which head of the inquiry, Lord Lloyd Berwick, called for.
Lord Lloyd also called upon the Ministry of Defence to set up a special fund for compensation payments for sufferers of the mystery illness.
Rev. Lacy and Cardinal O’Brien, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, called for an end to what they called a “wrong to bereaved families and men and women in broken health that only their public representatives can redress.”
The letter to the Prime Minister read: “This is not an issue for party animus but one on which Scotland’s public representatives and churches should work together to achieve a humane settlement without further delay.”
