WASHINGTON -- Island Cubans are increasingly engaging in acts of ``civic opposition,'' including a new generation of young people born after the revolution, according to a new exile study released Tuesday.

The Hialeah-based Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Directorate used media clips and telephone interviews for a year ending in January to draw up the report, Steps to Freedom , which was released by Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Notably, the report illustrates the expansion of what authors Orlando Gutierrez and Omar Lopez Montenegro called ``major opposition activity zones'' on the island.

In 1988, it said, only four dissident groups could be identified, all based in Havana. By 1998, thanks in part to the withdrawal of Soviet aid that led to less money for repression, said Gutierrez, there are now five major opposition activity zones -- Havana, Villa Clara, Camaguey, Santiago and Guantanamo.

``A process has begun inside Cuba that gives new value to the individual and has generated a resurgence in civic consciousness within the population,'' says the 24-page report, which highlights various episodes including hunger strikes, demonstrations and boycotts.

It added: ``An incipient civil society is developing, consisting of numerous professional associations, independent labor unions, and other types of organizations that are all struggling for their existence in the face of the regime's repressive intolerance.''

The study was carried out with the support of the conservative International Republican Institute, a pro-democracy group led by a former Reagan administration official.

``In no way are we saying that there is a coordinated well-organized resistance movement that is about to overthrow the regime,'' said Gutierrez, 32, a founder of the revolutionary group known as Directorio.

Instead, the Cuban-born Florida International University graduate described disconnected, far-flung, spontaneous efforts by individuals in different sectors -- from students to farmers to journalists -- ``to assert citizen rights.''

Diaz-Balart hailed the report's significance as reflecting dissent within a wider cross-section of Cuban society than some stereotypes suggest. ``The pro-democracy movement in Cuba is to a great degree led today by young people and women,'' he said. Rather than the work of Cubans who remember their island before the revolution, he said, civic opposition ``is growing day in and day out.''

The congressman used the news conference to release a list of 2,000 Cubans his office identified as political prisoners, including 50 who he said were arrested since Pope John Paul II's visit in January.

Diaz-Balart also released a letter that he and fellow Cuban-American Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., sent the Pope, seeking his intervention in the case of Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, a prisoner who has been on a hunger strike in a Guantanamo prison since May 25.