MIAMI, Florida (AP) --For more than a decade, Brothers to the Rescue pilots had a clear
mission: save fellow Cubans trying to make the 90-mile voyage to Florida in rubber
rafts.

Today, the Miami group has suspended its flights and is urging Cubans to stay
home and promote political change from within.

"Conditions have changed," said Jose Basulto, the group's founder. "The Cuban
people have been ready for a transition for a long time. We should help provide
them with a nonviolent strategy to work out their problems."

Basulto's decision is the latest in a series of events that appear to show that
many Cuban exiles, while still bitterly opposed to Fidel Castro, are more willing
than ever to discuss ways of normalizing relations with the communist
government, rather than simply trying to isolate it.

In late 2002, Jorge Mas Santos, president of the Cuban American National
Foundation, the powerful and famously uncompromising exile organization, said
he would discuss democratic transition with Cuban government officials --
except for Castro and his brother, Raul.

Earlier this month, a top Cuban diplomat met with exiles in Miami to plan for
the third Nation and Emigration conference in eight years.

The April event will reunite Cubans from around the world in Havana for three
days to discuss how second- and third-generation Cubans can have a
relationship with their homeland.

There are 11 million Cubans on the island. An additional 2 million live abroad,
half of them in South Florida.

The shift in attitude is attributed to a number of factors, among them:

• A realization that the 76-year-old Castro will not be around much longer.

• The rise of a new generation of Cubans who were not around when Castro took over
and do not feel as strongly about politics as their elders.

• Increased trade with and travel to Cuba.

• The negative coverage of Miami's Cuban hard-liners during the 2000 Elian Gonzalez
furor.

The 6-year-old boy was rescued at sea after his mother drowned. Many exiles
tried to prevent him from being returned to his father in Cuba, in a dispute that
exposed a schism in Miami's Cuban community between moderates and
hard-liners.

"We weren't able to see how the world had perceived us -- how our debate
and our rhetoric had lost relevance because the Cold War was over," said Joe
Garcia, the foundation's executive director.

"If we really want a democracy, we're going to have to talk to the communists,
the socialists, the centrists and the right-wing intransigents. All of them make up
a nation."

A new poll shows many Cuban Americans are ready for diplomacy and believe
dissidents within Cuba may hold the key to a democratic transition.

The poll, conducted for The Miami Herald, found that more than half of South
Florida's Cubans applaud recent efforts at dialogue between exiles and the
Cuban government.

The poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points,
surveyed 400 Cuban Americans in South Florida between February 7 and 10.

"People are willing to hold their nose in order to get some change. If the
trade-off is 25 more years of communism in Cuba or offer an olive branch to
officials who defect or change stripes, most people would rather do the second,
even though they don't like it," said Max Castro, a professor and expert on
U.S.-Cuba relations at University of Miami.

Even the foundation -- which claims to support the U.S. trade embargo
imposed against the Cuba since the early 1960s -- buys copy machines and
computers for dissidents in Cuba.

In Miami's Little Havana -- stronghold of the exile community -- anti-Castro
sentiment remains strong, and many exiles continue to believe it is pointless to
have a dialogue with a dictatorship.

Laura Vianello, 56, said she does not understand why Mas Santos would want
to open a dialogue with Cuban officials.

"Once Castro's gone, the army's in control. And Mas Santos is a nobody in
Cuba -- like the rest of us exiles," Vianello said as she sipped coffee at
Versailles, a restaurant frequented by hard-line exiles.

But some Cubans, especially recent immigrants, are more concerned about
sending money to family members back home than about maintaining the
embargo. And younger Cuban Americans are not as bitter about Castro as
their elders.

"Most of our beliefs are tied to what our parents say about Fidel, but we're not
as emotional because we didn't live through it," said graphic designer Hiram
Henriquez, 33. "We're in a kind of wait-and-see mode."

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.