Cuba honours heroic tradition of Vietnam People’s Army

Lt. Gen. Elfre Perez Zalpar, head of the Logistics Department of the Cuban Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces, addresses the ceremony in Havana (Photo: VNA)

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 Government, the MINFAR and the Ministry of the Interior of the country, along with representatives of some diplomatic and defence missions.

In his speech, Lt. Gen. Elfre Perez Zalpar, head of the 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 the 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 within only three decades since its establishment, the army that was founded on December 22, 1944 of the Vietnamese people defeated three of the world’s strongest militaries to liberate the nation.

The Cuban armed forces have developed 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 each soldier and people of Vietnam always keep in mind 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.