The delay in publishing the Chilcot report is “fast becoming a national disgrace”, according to Alex Salmond.
The former first minister said it was “completely understandable” that families’ patience had been stretched to the limit.
The SNP MP for Gordon, who is also the Westminster party’s foreign affairs spokesman, added: “Hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the illegal war and they are due an answer.”
Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats Willie Rennie said further delays would undermine the inquiry itself, regardless of the results.
He added: “Whilst the Chilcot inquiry is seeking to be fair to those criticised by its report, it is time they were fair to the victims of the war in Iraq.”
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who stood down as an MP at the end of the last parliament, said the problem was that the inquiry was “too loose and unstructured”.
He added: “The Leveson inquiry into phone hacking chaired by a judge with a strict timetable imposed from the beginning should be the model adopted from now on.”
Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary when the Iraq decision was taken, insisted the delay in publication had nothing to do with witnesses to the inquiry.
The former Labour MP added: “It has to be in everybody’s interest, but above all in the families’, to have this report out as soon as humanly possible.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: “We have great sympathy for parents and families who lost loved ones in Iraq.
“The prime minister has recently demanded that Sir John Chilcot provide a date for publishing the findings of the inquiry.
“Our armed forces put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms. We owe them, and their families, a special debt of gratitude.”