WASHINGTON - Ten years after the controversial Helms-Burton Act tightened the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, one of its staunchest supporters now says that some of its key passages may need to be changed.

Back in 1996, President Clinton signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, which provided support for Cuban dissidents and threatened lawsuits against foreigners who invested in Cuban properties seized from U.S. subjects and businesses.

It also detailed what Cuba needed to do before the embargo could be lifted: for instance, when a transition government would have to hold elections -- within 18 months -- and who could head that government, not Fidel Castro or his brother Raúl.

Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who drafted parts of the law, said he's generally pleased with Helms-Burton because it took key elements of Cuba policy out of the president's hands and thereby allowed the embargo ``to survive the second four years of the Clinton administration.''

But the law also contains unnecessary provisions, he added. ''Legislating is never a pretty process,'' he told The Miami Herald.

CONDITIONS

Díaz-Balart says he favors paring the conditions for lifting the embargo to three: Cuba must free all political prisoners and allow exiles to return, opposition political parties must be legalized, and the government must declare it will hold democratic elections ``in six months, one year, two years, three years.''

And what about the rest of Helms-Burton, including the clause that bars Fidel or Raúl Castro from heading a transition government? Díaz-Balart makes it clear that if Raúl met the three conditions, he would deal with Raúl.

''That's what I call static,'' Díaz-Balart said. ``I don't care what the name is. The [real] name is legitimacy.''

If required, Helms-Burton could be changed ''in 72 hours'' to make it easier to lift the embargo, he added.

The Castro brothers have given no sign that they would consider Díaz-Balart's proposals for change. But his remarks nevertheless have raised some eyebrows among Cuba observers.

Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, made up of moderate exiles who back a peaceful transition in Cuba, said Díaz-Balart's statements were ``a smart change in focus.''

''The congressman recognizes that the all-or-nothing approach [in Helms-Burton] is an impediment to bringing about a change,'' said Bilbao, director of operations for Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martínez's 2003 campaign.

Clinton signed the controversial Helms-Burton bill in 1996 amid the indignation that followed the shootdown by Cuban MiGs just weeks before of two small planes flown by the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue. Four men were killed.

Critics of the law say it limits the role the U.S. government can play in Cuba after Castro.

''Giving people reason to believe that the United States sees itself as the ultimate arbiter of what happens in Cuba, which government is good or bad, which government is acceptable or not, which one is democratic or not . . . undermines the objective of the U.S. playing a positive role in promoting a peaceful democratic transition in Cuba,'' said Richard Nuccio, a Clinton White House advisor on Cuba.

LAW'S IMPACT

The Cuban government, which has attacked the provisions as a galling example of U.S. interventionism, estimates that Helms-Burton has cost the island $82 billion in potential investments. But it also oddly claimed that the government weathered the law's impacts. The law was passed when Cuba was opening itself up to foreign investments for the first time since the 1950s.

''They tried to score a home run on us, and we split their bat,'' the newspaper Juventud Rebelde said on its front page on March 12, when Helms-Burton turned 10 years old.

Many in the Cuban-American community still back the legislation, largely drafted by Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, then respectively aides to Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Rep. Dan Brown of Indiana, both Republicans.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, said the law put an economic stranglehold on Castro, brought new attention to rights abuses in the island and ``provided help for human rights activists and pro-democracy forces in Cuba.''

Helms-Burton also generated international protests because it extended the reach of U.S. courts. Its Title III, which lets U.S. residents use U.S. courts to sue foreigners who invest in confiscated U.S. properties in Cuba, has been consistently waived by both the Clinton and Bush administration.

Title IV, which strips executives and owners of foreign companies that invest in Cuba of their U.S. visas, has been selectively used, much to the irritation of Cuban-American lobbyists. The State Department has taken away visas, or threatened to do so, of Canadian, Mexican and Jamaican investors, but not of the more powerful Europeans.