MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) --U.S. Coast Guard aircraft and vessels continued to
search on Wednesday for survivors from a speedboat that capsized in the Florida
Straits with 30 Cuban migrants on board, but relatives' hopes of finding people alive
were fading.

If the 30 missing people, reported to include 12 children, are found to have died, it
would be one of the worst single tragedies involving migrants smuggled from the
communist-run island over the 90-mile (140-km) stretch of ocean to Florida.

On Tuesday, the Coast Guard found what was believed to be the vessel used by the
migrants, a white 30-foot (10-meter) speedboat, lying hull up 47 miles (75 km)
southeast of Key West near the southern tip of the Florida Keys.

The migrants set out from western Cuba late on Friday night and failed to show up
on Saturday. The Coast Guard began searching on Sunday and by Wednesday had
covered some 50,000 square miles (130,000 square km).

"We're still searching," said Coast Guard spokesman Gene Smith. "We're working on
getting a salvage vessel out there, and divers there to investigate."

Two Coast Guard helicopters, a plane and two cutters were in the area. The
capsized vessel had drifted north to a spot about 45 miles (70 km) southeast of
Marathon.

Asked if he thought there might still be survivors, Smith said, "We're always
hopeful." He declined to speculate on when the search might be called off.

But Jose Basulto, who heads Miami-based exile organization Brothers to the Rescue
and who helped in the search until the vessel was found, said relatives were losing
hope.

"It's unlikely now a survivor would show up," he said.

Basulto was angry with smugglers who charge thousands of dollars a person for the
trip and cram clients onto small boats. "This is a crime, a very serious crime," he
said.

"Smugglers are exchanging human lives for money, they are overloading these boats.
Not even a good boat can stand the number of people they put on it."

Smith said the boat probably hit high seas.

"A 30-foot boat in 14-foot (4.5-meter) seas, that's just crazy, it's really dangerous,
and this is a 30-foot boat with 30 people on board.

"How many people have to die before people realize that paying a smuggler is paying
to put people in grave danger?"

Border Patrol figures indicate that Florida-based smugglers are bringing nearly 200
Cubans a month to the United States. In recent years, illegal Cuban migrants have
increasingly come on smugglers' vessels in hopes they will reach U.S. soil and be
allowed to stay, rather than trying to make the journey on a home-made vessel and
risk being intercepted and sent home.

The charge for the trip, up to $10,000 a head, is far beyond the means of most
Cubans on the island, so the "fee" is usually paid by relatives in the United States.

One man with relatives on the boat, David Montane, said he promised some $16,000
to smugglers to bring over his ex-wife and their 8-year-old daughter.

Montane was distraught over his missing daughter. "What can I do now if she's
gone?" he told the Miami Herald. "I can't live all my life with this guilt."

In Havana, neither Cuban officials nor state-run media had mentioned the boat
incident by early Wednesday, but President Fidel Castro's government has routinely
blamed other migration accidents in the past on the United States.

Havana says the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act entices people across the water by
offering privileged treatment because Cuban migrants who touch U.S. soil are
allowed to stay.

Cuba also says Washington's four-decade-old economic embargo has created the
hardship that makes many try to leave the island when they hear the "siren calls" of
capitalism.

Federal prosecutors are adamant they will be tough on migrant smugglers and
prosecutors are considering the death penalty against two Miami area men awaiting
trial after six people died when a 27-foot (nine-meter) speedboat carrying 26 people
flipped over in rough seas in August this year.

This week's incident happened two years after a migrant tragedy that turned into a
dramatic custody battle. Elian Gonzalez, then 5, was rescued at sea on November
25, 1999, after surviving a voyage that killed his mother and 10 other people.

The battle over whether Elian should stay in Miami with relatives or return to live in
Cuba with his father turned into a show-down between the father and Cuban exiles
that lasted until the child finally flew back to Cuba in June 2000.

    Copyright 2001 Reuters.