The event, chaired by Minister Leopoldo Cintra Frias and Vietnamese Ambassador Nguyen Trung Thanh, was attended by more than 700 guests, including officials of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Cuban Government, MINFAR and the Ministry of the Interior of the country, along with representatives of several diplomatic and defence missions.
In his speech, Lt. Gen. Elfre Perez Zaldivar, head of MINFAR’s Logistics Department, said the VPA is an illustration of the fact that in a war, the most important thing is not powerful weapons or high technology, but having people with unyielding fighting spirit and confidence in victory for the sake of national sovereignty.
Highlighting the Vietnamese army and people’s feats of arms, he said that within only three decades since its establishment, the army of the Vietnamese people that was founded on December 22, 1944, defeated three of the world’s strongest militaries to liberate the nation.
The Cuban armed forces have developed the VPA’s experiences into their own theories, he affirmed, stressing the close-knit and faithful solidarity between the two countries’ militaries and peoples.
Meanwhile, Col. Ta Van Phang, head of the Vietnamese defence attaché office in Cuba, said that each soldier and person of Vietnam always keeps in mind the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz’s trenchant statement that: “For Vietnam, Cuba is ready to shed its blood.”
In any difficult circumstances, Vietnam will always stand firmly side by side with Cuba to safeguard sovereignty, independence, peace and socialism, he added.
Earlier, Chief of the Cuban Air and Air Defence Force Maj. Gen. Pedro Mendiondo Gomez and Ambassador Thanh led a delegation to lay wreaths at the monument to late Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh in Havana.
