BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 WASHINGTON -- Launching a new offensive on the Capitol, Cuban American
 National Foundation Chairman Jorge Mas Santos on Wednesday urged a
 technological and financial invasion of the island funded by U.S. aid to topple
 Fidel Castro's regime.

 Arm anti-Castro Cubans with cellphones and computer printers, fax machines and
 Internet access through special U.S. funding to private organizations and
 individuals, said Mas, in his first major address since taking over the influential
 lobby.

 ``Many on our side have pretended that if we just enforced U.S. sanctions against
 the regime, we could achieve our objective of establishing freedom and
 democracy for the Cuban people,'' said the U.S.-born Mas, 37, whose founder
 father died in 1997.

 Mas offered no price tag for his laundry list of ideas. It included using taxpayer
 money to pay private groups to fund microloans inside Cuba to independent soup
 kitchens, day care centers and restaurants as a way of disrupting the
 state-controlled economy.

 He also proposed establishing a Food for Peace Program that would somehow
 circumvent Cuban distribution systems and deliver U.S. farmers' food donations to
 individuals; funding and creating independent Internet sites and e-mail portals; and
 licensing U.S. groups to establish business management training and labor rights
 institutes in Cuba.

 The call comes just days after Cuba freed two Czechs who had been jailed in
 Havana for 24 days on allegations they engaged in subversion by meeting with
 dissidents to describe how they resisted Communist rule in their country.

 He unveiled the list at an invitation-only speech to academics, church activists
 and think-tank members at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
 Some people there politely told him they oppose the embargo. Others questioned
 how the aid programs -- which Mas said should be ``overt, not covert'' -- could
 circumvent Cuban government interference.

 ``I hope it comes with a `Get out of jail, free' card,'' one audience member told
 another after the speech.

 CANF Washington Director José R. Cárdenas characterized the address as part
 of a calculated campaign to increase Bush administration attention on ending
 Cuba's four-decade communist rule.

 Mas met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday to urge
 what he called ``a reinvigorated political will with an activist policy.''

 Using a huge endowment left by founder Jorge Mas Canosa, the foundation
 bought a $1.7 million townhouse in Washington and is restoring the Freedom
 Tower in Miami. CANF also expanded its permanent staff after Mas' failed effort to
 intermediate in the Elián González episode.

 Many of Mas' ideas are not new. Republican Sen. Jesse Helms outlined a similar
 strategy in a speech several weeks ago, and Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Miami,
 is advocating similar but not identical legislation.

 But Mas said today's strategy is no longer to simply solidify sanctions but to
 expand people-to-people contacts like the Reagan administration's support to
 Poland in the 1980s.

 The Clinton administration similarly supported people-to-people contacts, mostly
 cultural and sports events. But in a prepared text distributed to the audience, Mas
 dismissed those efforts as "a static, sterile policy in which leading officials have
 paid lip service to the goal of a free Cuba, but were actually more interested in
 preserving what they called `stability' on the island.''

 Mas also scolded members of his host think-tank, the Inter-American Dialogue,
 made up of both Republicans and Democrats, some who argue that ending the
 embargo would flood Cuba with capitalist culture.

 Dialogue members met with Castro last week in Havana.

 "Whatever you call your delegation, you are just a tourist,'' Mas said.