Cuba Exiles Mark Tugboat Sinking

MIAMI (AP) - Cuban exiles marked the 1994 sinking of a tugboat that killed 41 Cubans but were without their leader Sunday, whose vessel was confiscated by U.S. authorities after he promised to enter Cuba's waters.

Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the group Democracy Movement, began chugging toward Cuba at about midnight Saturday when U.S. Marshals and Coast Guard officials ordered him off his boat.

``They said if I got on another boat, they'd confiscate that too,'' he said Sunday from Key West.

The rest of the flotilla made it to its destination in the waters off Cuba without incident. Members of the group lay flowers in the water, sang the Cuban national anthem, and chanted ``Free Cuba'' - all under the watch of three Coast Guard ships.

On July 13, 1994, Cuban authorities sank the tugboat carrying about 70 people attempting to flee the island. Forty-one people, including many children, were killed.

Authorities escorted Sanchez's 30-foot craft, Democracia, to Key West. He was free to go, but his boat remained under lock and key Sunday.

``He has been told that by entering the Cuban territorial seas without permission from Cuba he was putting himself and others at personal risk,'' said Coast Guard Petty Officer Veronica Bandrowsky.

The Democracia was leading a convoy of 14 boats to 12 miles off the Cuban coast - the point where Cuban territorial waters ends - as part of the group's regular protests against the communist government of Cuban President Fidel Castro.

But unlike previous flotillas, Sanchez intended to motor to the site within Cuban waters where the tugboat was sunk.

AP-NY-07-13-97 1902EDT