The State Department is monitoring a bold, 40-day hunger strike in Cuba to watch whether the dissidents' human rights are abused, a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

Harold Koh, assistant secretary of state for human rights, was in Miami to thank Cuban exiles for their efforts on behalf of a condemnation of Cuba in April by the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The vote in Geneva returned Cuba to the commission's list of significant human rights violators.

``We support the right of peaceful political dissent anywhere in the world,'' Koh told reporters at the University of Miami's North-South Center.

He said the State Department is keeping the hunger strike under ``a very close supervision.'' He said the dissidents carrying out the strike are advocating ``the exact thing the Cuban government has suppressed so brutally over the past.''

About 25 Cubans are taking part in the protest to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners' lack of freedom of expression, according to Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a hunger strike leader.

They are staging it in a Havana apartment plastered with black-and-white posters of Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas K. Gandhi and Miami's late Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa.

The protesters plan to live only on water and other liquids for up to 40 days.

Koh said the United States hopes to improve respect for human rights on the island by supporting a transition to democracy and people-to-people contacts, like last month's baseball game between a Cuban team and the Baltimore Orioles in Baltimore.

``I think, in the end, Cuba is much larger than the regime,'' he said. ``The important thing is to express solidarity with the people, with the dissidents.''

Koh said he thinks the U.S.-Cuban baseball exchange is a good example of people-to-people contacts as part of the U.S. effort to support the formation of civil society on the island.