HAVANA.- The Party, the State and the Vietnamese people had a new gesture of solidarity towards Cuba by donating a thousand tons of rice to help compensating damages caused by Hurricane Irma.

The act took place in the city of Hai Phong, same place where in times of the liberation war, Vietnam received sugar and other inputs from Cuba in a gesture of solidarity that never expected anything in return.

The donation has the additional merit of being carried out when that Asian nation recovers itself from recent and successive battering of typhoons and floods that caused huge human and material losses.

The ceremony was attended by Antonio Carricarte, Cuba´s Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment; Lianys Torres, Cuba's ambassador to Vietnam; Le Van Thoi, Deputy Director General of Vietnamese State Reserve; and authorities of the Hai Phong People's Committee.