23 Haitians Die, 119 Missing as Boat Capsizes Off Cuba : Refugees: Havana says it rescued 60. The accident is sure to fuel debate over U.S. repatriation efforts.

Twenty-three Haitian refugees died and 119 others were missing and presumed dead after their sailboat capsized in strong winds and high seas off the eastern tip of Cuba, the official Cuban news agency reported Thursday.

Prensa Latina said 60 people had survived the Tuesday night shipwreck and that Cuban rescuers were conducting an air, land and sea search, “although the missing are presumed dead.”

The news agency said 12 women and two children were among those confirmed dead and that survivors were receiving food and medical attention at a Cuban government camp in Maisi, at the easternmost tip of the island.

The accident--which if it reaches the death tolls estimated Thursday would be among the worst such wrecks reported in at least a decade--occurred Tuesday night off Maisi Point, about 75 miles from the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti.

Thousands of Haitians have fled their island for the United States by that route since the Sept. 30 overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a military coup.

In Miami on Thursday, the Bush Administration failed to persuade a federal judge to set aside an order blocking the government from repatriating an estimated 2,500 Haitian refugees being held aboard U.S. Coast Guard cutters in the Windward Passage and at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay.

President Bush has begun to turn back the refugees trying to reach southern Florida in leaky, overcrowded rafts and sailboats. The Bush Administration contends that allowing the Haitians into the United States only encourages more of them to risk their lives at sea. The U.S. government also considers the Haitians to be economic refugees, fleeing poverty rather than political persecution by the new government.

The repatriation was stopped Tuesday when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order in Miami.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins not only refused an Administration appeal to lift the temporary order but gave attorneys for Haitian refugees the right to interview those who have been detained. The decision came after the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami filed a motion late Wednesday, asking for an emergency hearing on the restraining order.

“We’re thrilled,” said Cheryl Little, lead attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, which filed a lawsuit against the State Department to halt the forced repatriation program after 536 Haitians had been sent back to Port-au-Prince. “Our basic concern is that there are political refugees who are not being properly identified (by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service interviewers). Now we’ll be able to see for ourselves.”

Little said that she, three other attorneys and four translators hope to begin taking depositions aboard ships and at Guantanamo early today.

Hearings on the issue of repatriation are to continue next week, with oral arguments set for Wednesday.

The shipwreck is sure to fuel the already emotional public debate over the fate of Haitians fleeing the hemisphere’s most impoverished nation, which is now ruled by the military.

In Miami, which has a significant Haitian population, the drownings were the talk of Creole-language radio talk shows.

Samiga Florvil, producer of a nightly one-hour talk show, said that even though the United States insists its interdiction policy aims to save Haitian lives, the Administration is somehow responsible for the tragedy. “One day after Bush says something about people drowning, there is a drowning at sea,” Florvil said. “So how come they get killed now?”

Florvil said that he, and many other callers, believe that the exodus from Haiti will continue as long as the army remains in control and Aristide is in exile: “People will keep coming. In Haiti now, the army is like a dog uncaged. People have to flee. First they go over the wall, and then they go into the sea.”

Officials with the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay said they had no information on the boat that sank in Cuban waters. Information coming out of Cuba was sketchy, not only because the shipwreck occurred in a remote area but also because Cuban media normally do not report in depth on such accidents.

Cuban television did not mention the mishap in its midday broadcast. Cuban radio read the same National Information Agency report cited by Prensa Latina in a dispatch monitored in Mexico City.

It was unclear whether the sailboat carrying 200 people was traveling toward Florida or the Guantanamo base when it capsized. A reporter for the National Information Agency in Guantanamo, who declined to be identified, said the Cuban army reported that the boat “had sails and very unsafe conditions.”

He said the boat went down “in bad weather with strong winds. Very few of those unsafe boats make it through. It is very difficult to cross that zone,” the reporter said.

The Cuban government gave no indication as to what it would do with the 60 survivors of Tuesday’s shipwreck.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler expressed sadness over the deaths but added that the Coast Guard estimates that 50% of all Haitians who set out across the ocean for America perish.

“Our policy is to save lives,” she said, noting that the Haitians “are trying to cross 600 miles of open sea in nothing but flimsy boats with no life jackets, no food provisions--it is inhumane, it is the complete opposite of what some people are writing--to send a signal, ‘Get on these awful, rickety boats and risk your lives and your family’s lives out on the open sea.’ ”

Within the last decade, there have been many reported deaths of Haitians attempting to navigate their way to America on ramshackle craft.

The latest wave of Haitian refugees began a month after Aristide’s overthrow. Some observers speculate that many Haitians were waiting to see if Aristide would be restored to power or if an international economic boycott of Haiti could force his return.

Human rights activists and clerics in Haiti say that increasingly repressive conditions, particularly in the poorest areas where Aristide won his greatest electoral support, have caused more people to flee.

Times special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami contributed to this report.