Thousands of "weekend soldiers" in Scotland remain on standby following the call-up of 1,500 reservists to serve in the Gulf.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon confirmed the deployment of reserve soldiers on Tuesday afternoon in the House of Commons.

There was no specific Scottish element to the announcement, although the MoD said some of the reservists may be from army, navy and RAF reserve units in Scotland.

Mr Hoon said it was likely that further deployments would be made in the coming weeks.

General reserve

Throughout the UK, the Territorial Army acts as a general reserve to the full-time forces.

The TA in Scotland has about 5,000 members (42,000 UK-wide), all trained to provide assistance to the army in times of national emergency.

TA soldiers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and all have civilian jobs.

They train on a part-time basis, normally at weekends, and attend an annual two-week camp.

The TA is split into different regiments and requires the service of a wide range of professionals, such as medics, engineers and transport workers.

Soldiers serving in the medical units are qualified paramedics, doctors and nurses.

Regiments reduced

Medics were the first group of reserve soldiers to be called into action during the Gulf War in 1991 and defence experts have predicted the same thing is about to happen again.

Following the Strategic Defence Review announcements in November 1998, Scotland's five TA infantry regiments were cut to two.

The Highland and Lowland battalions of infantry soldiers are based in Perth and Glasgow.

The 51 Highland Regiment, from Queen's Barracks in Perth, currently has a small company of about 50 soldiers deployed in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Pay scale

Working as part of the International Security Assistance Force, the soldiers were given four months off from their civilian jobs and took up the posting in November.

The salary of TA soldiers depends on their rank. The scale begins at �25 per day for a private and goes up to �175 per day for a senior officer.

All members of the TA are given an annual bounty payment of �1,250.

This is only guaranteed after soldiers have been with the TA for five years and have completed all necessary training.