WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama plans to lift a longstanding U.S. ban on family travel and remittances to Cuba, a senior administration official said Friday, in what could be an opening gesture toward more openness with the Castro regime.

The move will fulfill a campaign promise and follows more modest action in Congress this year to loosen travel rules.

The president has authority to loosen these rules on his own, and the move is likely meant as a signal of a new attitude toward both Cuba and other Latin American countries that have pressed the U.S. to alter its policy.

The president does not intend to call for lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba, which would require congressional action, nor is any specific diplomatic outreach contemplated, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But advocates for greater openness with Cuba said the move was significant in and of itself, signaling a willingness of the Obama administration to take a fresh look at Cuba policy early in his presidency.

The timing of the announcement was unclear, but several Cuba experts speculate that it could come ahead of this month’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island. It’s time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and their fathers, their sisters and their brothers,” Mr. Obama said last May in a speech in Miami. “It’s time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent on the Castro regime. That is the commitment I’m making right here.”

The travel and remittance bans both stem from the embargo, put in place in 1961 after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. The travel ban lapsed during the Carter administration, and for a few years, all U.S. citizens could freely travel to the island, just 90 miles off the Florida coast.

But President Ronald Reagan reinstituted the travel ban, and it stood firm until President Bill Clinton relaxed the travel rules, allowing Cuban Americans to visit family once a year, among other changes. In 2004, President George W. Bush tightened them again, allowing these family trips just once every three years, and setting a more narrow definition of who qualified as family. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandparents qualified, but uncles, aunts and cousins did not.

The rules on how much money family members can send to Cuba have also changed somewhat with various administrations, but under Mr. Bush, each recipient household could receive a maximum of $300 per quarter.

The rules will affect an estimated 1.5 million Americans who have family members in Cuba. Other Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba but only if they qualify through particular cultural, educational and other programs.

The expected action comes as cries grow louder in Congress to open U.S. policy toward Cuba. A bill introduced this year would allow unlimited travel for any purpose by Americans. And Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) wrote Mr. Obama this week calling for a change in U.S. posture toward Cuba and suggested that his administration open a dialogue about how to bring Cuba into the international community and perhaps the Organization of American States. Mr. Lugar also called for appointing a special envoy to Cuba.

Mr. Obama has also been under pressure from a number of Latin leaders, most notably Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to make a symbolic gesture toward Cuba as a means to start rebuilding regional relations. The U.S. embargo against Cuba is seen by many Latin leaders as a failed, anachronistic policy.

Making an announcement before the regional summit could dissipate pressure on the U.S. at the meeting. U.S. officials say they hope to focus those conversations on various regional issues including the economic crisis.

The move could help many poor Cubans by giving them access to money from relatives, who also often come bearing gifts and basic necessities that are sometimes hard to get in Cuba, such as toothpaste and tampons.

While that could ease economic pressure on the island’s totalitarian government, it also could create pressure in other ways. During the open-travel Carter years, the flood of visits from more prosperous Cuban-Americans created social discontent in Cuba, where ordinary Cubans were shocked by how much more affluent their relatives were living 90 miles away in Florida and elsewhere.

That directly led to an incident where as many as 10,000 Cubans took refuge in the Peruvian embassy looking for a way out of the island, a situation that led Mr. Castro to say that any Cuban who wanted to leave the island could do so. That prompted an estimated 120,000 Cubans to flee in the so-called Mariel boatlift.

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