Exiles Want to Expand U.S.-Cuba Relations

MIAMI — The leading organization for Cuban exiles here is calling on the White House to expand relations with Cuba’s government, and funnel much more public and private American money to the Cuban people.

A 14-page proposal from the group, the Cuban American National Foundation, lays out what the document calls “a break from the past” that would “chart a new direction for U.S.-Cuba policy.”

It is the basis of a continuing discussion with the Obama administration, White House and foundation officials said, and it amounts to the group’s most significant rejection of a national approach to Cuba that it helped shape and that has been defined by hostility and limited contact with the island.

Foundation officials described it as an effort to direct attention away from Fidel and Raúl Castro and toward the Cuban people.

“For 50 years we have been trying to change the Cuban government, the Cuban regime,” said the foundation’s president, Francisco J. Hernandez, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. “At the present time, what we have to do is change the emphasis to the Cuban people — because they are going to be the ones who change things in Cuba.”

The proposal stops short of calling for an end to the 47-year-old trade embargo the United States has imposed on Cuba. Mr. Hernandez said the embargo should remain until the Cuban government gives “more freedom and human rights to people.” But he also described it as “a symbol” and “not something that is that important anymore.”

In a reversal from the group’s founding principles, he said American policy should focus not on sanctions but on proactive policies that direct resources to Cuba.

In addition to recommending an increase in how much money Cuban-Americans can send to their relatives in Cuba — which the Obama administration has said it plans to enact — it says the 1997 ban on cash aid from the American government should also be rescinded. It advocates an increase in private aid for pro-democracy groups and a plan for “permitting Cuban-Americans and others, under license, to send cash, building materials, agricultural implements and provide services to independent, private entrepreneurs.”

The proposal also urges the United States to encourage travel to Cuba for cultural, academic or humanitarian purposes, returning to the standards of 1999, before the Bush