Graphic: MGN Online Despite growing bipartisan support for engagement, the Democratic leadership has been reluctant to take on the issue. Many analysts suspect that Democrats are wary of angering anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, a critical swing state in November?s presidential elections.

Hawks are particularly concerned that the recent rise in realists’ influence over the Bush administration’s foreign policy might begin to affect U.S. policy toward the Caribbean nation.

“Now, of all times, we must do nothing that will slow momentum toward genuine political change,” declared Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under President George W. Bush. He was speaking at a mid-January conference devoted to Cuba policy hosted by the influential neoconservative American Enterprise Institute.

“There will be plenty of time to help the Cuban people rebuild their economy on firm foundations,” Mr. Noriega said, “but moving in prematurely to provide a modicum of material benefits to some Cubans may allow what’s left of the Castro brothers’ regime to bide a few more tragic days in power.”

The conference, which was held on the eve of President Fidel Castro’s announcement that he is too ill to return to public life and take part in Cuba’s upcoming parliamentary elections, came amid growing evidence that the administration’s realists, led by Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have made major gains in asserting control over policy toward other U.S. nemeses such as North Korea, Syria and Iran.

But participants in the American Enterprise Institute conference, including a senior State Department official, made it clear that no changes in U.S. policy will occur during Mr. Bush’s last year as president unless both Fidel and Raul Castro are removed and “democratic” reform is well underway.

“President Bush has clearly stated that changes in our policy will be driven by changes in Cuba,” said Kirsten Madison, a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

“We want our businesses to engage in Cuba at a time and in a circumstance that they will be able to reinforce and support a process of change, not reinforce a repressive state,” she said.

While Mr. Noriega was the State Department’s top Latin America official from 2003 to 2005, he sought to discourage Latin American countries from improving relations with Cuba and worked to increase support for Cuban dissidents and Radio and TV Marti.

On leaving the administration, he joined the American Enterprise Institute, a hub of neoconservative and far-right foreign policy activism, some of whose fellows and associates, such as former Defense Policy Board Chair Richard Perle and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, played key roles in planning and rallying support for the 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney’s spouse, Lynne Cheney, has been a long-time American Enterprise Institute “scholar.”

The United States maintained an across-the-board trade embargo against Cuba from 1962 until 2000, when Congress approved the limited sale of agricultural goods and medicine, about $400 million of which were exported last year.

But the administration has strongly opposed all attempts to further liberalize relations with Cuba and repeatedly threatened to veto legislation—passed by both houses of Congress—that would lift the long-standing travel ban by U.S. citizens to Cuba. Indeed, it recently announced that it was stepping up prosecutions of U.S. citizens who violated the ban.

That policy has drawn protests not just from the Cuban government, which blames the U.S. embargo for many of its economic problems, but from much of the international community.

Last October, the 192-member United Nations General Assembly voted for the 17th consecutive year to call on the United States to lift the trade restrictions. Only Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands—all close U.S. allies—joined with the United States to oppose the measure.

When the Democratic Party took control of the U.S. Congress in 2006, some expected that lawmakers would attempt to loosen trade and travel restrictions to Cuba. Last April, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., co-wrote an editorial with Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., urging the new Congress to put an end to the embargo, arguing that “American openness is a source of strength, not a concession to dictatorships.”

But despite growing bipartisan support for engagement, the Democratic leadership has been reluctant to take on the issue. Many analysts suspect that Democrats are wary of angering anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, a critical swing state in November’s presidential elections.

Jim Lobe contributed to this report.