WASHINGTON -- Cuba's celebrated and increasingly brassy blogger Yoani Sánchez emerged Thursday as a player in U.S.-Cuba relations, scoring a lengthy reply from President Barack Obama to her questions and playing a starring role in a congressional hearing on efforts to let American tourists visit Cuba.

Sánchez's blog, Generación Y, posted Obama's responses to seven pointed questions she asked him in what she describes as a foray into ``popular diplomacy.'' She also queried Cuban leader Raúl Castro -- but he hadn't replied as of late Thursday.

Obama broke little new ground in his responses, largely reiterating his administration's stance on Cuba: a desire for more contact between the two governments and its peoples, while insisting that Cuba improve its human rights record.

But the fact that the U.S. president replied to the blogger served to highlight Sánchez's role as a distinctive voice of dissent in Cuba, a 34-year-old who has won a string of international prizes for her elegant and sharply worded blog -- officially blocked in Cuba, yet exceedingly popular. Her blog gets 1 million visitors a month, and by 5 p.m. Thursday the Obama post had 986 comments.

Sánchez wrote that she had sent the questions to the two leaders because for too long ``Cubans have resigned themselves to having no one `up there' explain or consult with us the road this island will take, so much like a ship taking on water and at the point of sinking.''

TRAVEL BAN DEBATE

In Congress, as critics and supporters of the decades-old travel ban used Sánchez's recent beating, presumably at the hands of Cuban security forces, to criticize the Castro regime, House Foreign Affairs chairman Howard Berman read an essay Sánchez wrote in support of lifting the ban.

``An opening of travel for Americans could bring more results in the democratization of Cuba than the indecisive performance of Raúl Castro,'' Sánchez wrote. ``Along with suitcases, Bermuda shorts and sunblock, support, solidarity and freedom could come, too. Both peoples would come out winners.''

The hearing -- the first time a full congressional committee has delved into the hotly contested issue of lifting the travel ban -- came as proponents suggest they've got their best opportunity to date to scrap the prohibition that prevents American tourists from spending money in Cuba. Berman made it clear he plans to continue pushing -- perhaps scheduling a hearing on legislation as soon as next spring.

``I don't want just a hearing, I want to eliminate the travel ban,'' Berman, a California Democrat, said after the hearing. ``I think there's a better chance than ever before.''

Opponents of lifting the ban suggest the votes aren't there to pass the legislation, and critics of easing sanctions outnumbered supporters on the committee Thursday. They also pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's remarks to suggest House leadership is unlikely to engage in a floor fight on Cuba policy anytime soon.

The legislation could face an even tougher reception in the Senate, where several senators are prepared to block it.

Proponents of lifting the ban argued that 50 years of isolating Cuba had done little to bring democracy to the island and that Americans should have the right to travel to the island. They suggested that Americans could be ambassadors for change.

But Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and others argued that tourism dollars would only enrich the Castro regime -- which James Cason, the former chief at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, noted penalizes Cubans for talking to foreigners. Ros-Lehtinen noted that Europeans and tourists ``from around the world'' have been going to Cuba ``for rum, music, sex, cigars and sun for years.''

``Have they brought about democratic reform and change?'' Ros-Lehtinen asked.

Sánchez wrote in her blog that she sent the questions to the two world leaders in an attempt to find out ``from my diminutive position as a citizen, how this conflict is going to evolve.''

Though her blog is blocked in Cuba, savvy cybernauts can get around the block, and her posts are distributed within the island via CDs, flash-memory drives and home-printed compilations.

GETTING NOTICED

Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview that she sought out several ``citizen roads'' to deliver the questions to Obama. ``Evidently, one of them worked, but I don't know which.''

She said Obama's replies came as a ``great surprise,'' though ``a high official'' suggested to her that Obama had ``personally written the replies.'' Sánchez declined to identify the official, but the U.S. has a diplomatic mission in Havana.

The blogger noted that in the Spanish version of his answers, Obama refers to her with the familiar tú instead of the formal usted, and added: ``I liked that. It breaks the scheme of power vs. citizen.''

Obama, who has opened up travel to the island for Cuban Americans and sought greater engagement with Cuba, wrote to Sánchez that her blog ``provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba.'' He noted he was disappointed the Cuban government did not allow her to travel to New York last month to receive a major journalism prize.

A State Department spokesman confirmed Obama wrote to Sánchez. The Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington declined to comment.

In his response, Obama appeared to sidestep a question about whether he would ``recognize the legitimacy of the Raúl Castro government [in] . . . eventual talks.''

``I am prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a range of issues of mutual interest,'' Obama wrote Sánchez. ``It is also my intent to facilitate greater contact with the Cuban people, especially among divided Cuban families. . . .

``We seek to engage with Cubans outside of the government as we do elsewhere around the world, as the government, of course, is not the only voice that matters in Cuba. We take every opportunity to interact with the full range of Cuban society.''

HER REPUTATION

Sánchez's questions to the leaders are the latest in a string of actions that have raised her profile.

After she was denied permission to travel to New York last month, she had someone film her complaints to a Cuban migration official, then posted the video. A week later, she sneaked into a government building hosting a seminar on the Internet and asked why the government was blocking free access to the Web. Again, she posted a video of her complaint.

On Nov. 6, Sánchez said that she and another blogger were punched and thrown into a car by presumed state security agents as they walked to join a peaceful protest in downtown Havana.

Sánchez told El Nuevo Herald on Thursday that she could not predict the government's reaction to her Obama contact, but that she had posed the questions in a respectful manner and was proud of the ``journalistic weight of all this -- an interview!''