With regard to the Foreign Policy of Cuba, facts are self-evident. I have never claimed that all what Soviets and Cubans did were wrong. Yet, as history clearly shows, Cuba followed the Soviet Union into committing certain mistakes.

I did not try to compare Rohana Wijeweera with either Fidel Castro or Che Guevara, or the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) with the July 26 Movement in Cuba. That would be historically erroneous. What I stated was that the Cuban Revolution and the subsequent Latin American anti-colonial movements inspired the JVP and its cadres.

I have no recollection of Dayan’s alleged ‘public exchange’ at the New Town Hall, but I cannot claim that it did not occur. Nevertheless, what I clearly remember is the prolonged conversation Dayan had with me in the latter part of 1982. He was consistently arguing that the JVP should recognise and advocate the right to establish a separate state of Eelam. I clearly articulated the JVP position at the time, that the JVP did accept the right to self-determination. The JVP never believed that separation would provide a solution to the national question.

Even if Fidel and Che objected to bourgeois repression against youth movements in countries like Sri Lanka (which they did not), Dayan and his ilk would not have followed their moral example. His support and contribution to the repressive regimes in Sri Lanka and elsewhere provide ample evidence in this regard.

Dayan’s request for a photograph is not only laughable and pathetic, as he was one of the contributors to the then UNP regime’s repression in the latter part of the eighties that led to the destruction of almost all historical records of the JVP. I was not part of the JVP by then. My statement in this regard was qualified in the sense that this “meeting was sanctioned by the Cubans, if my memory is correct”. However, having made several enquiries regarding this matter, I can clarify and confirm that this meeting between Rohana Wijeweera and Fidel Castro had not taken place.

However, it must be admitted that Mr. Bopage is completely correct when he point out that the line of Fidel and the Cubans was quite different from that of Wijeweera and the JVP! I recall that I had a public exchange on the contradictions between the JVP’s line and that of Fidel and Che, at the New Town Hall, Colombo in 1979, which was later reproduced by me in the Lanka Guardian.

Mr. Bopage is pathetically, laughably, wrong when he thinks and implies that Fidel was wrong and Wijeweera and the JVP were right, or that the latter were more correct than the former!

By the way, if Wijeweera finally got the appointment with Fidel in 1979, may we please see the photographs?