WASHINGTON -- (AP) -- It was, perhaps, the one time when the passions
 spawned by the Elian Gonzalez saga degenerated into violence. The
 consequences could take months to play out.

 As night fell on April 14, about 15 Cuban men emerged from Cuba's diplomatic
 mission and assaulted a group of protesters demanding that the 6-year-old be
 allowed to remain in the United States.

 No one disputes the altercation took place. Still, three weeks later, sharply
 differing accounts describe what provoked it.

 Luis Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban mission, said demonstrators jostled
 and spit at Cuban personnel and insulted women and children from the mission.

 Fernandez also said the protesters passed ``objects'' through the tall iron fence in
 front of the mission, a breach, he says, of the ``inviolability'' of the diplomatic site.
 The mission lodged a strong protest note the following day with the State
 Department.

 Brigida Benitez, a Cuban-American lawyer who participated in the protest, called
 Fernandez's account ``completely untrue.''

 ``We saw no women (from the mission), no one was spat upon, and there was no
 physical contact until they came out and attacked us,'' she says.

 The State Department registered extreme concern with Cuban diplomats and
 demanded an explanation but has received none. ``We have not entered into
 details,'' Fernandez said Friday.

 District of Columbia police have begun a criminal investigation as well. A police
 spokesman said the case is being treated as simple assault. The State
 Department is withholding further action until the police complete their
 investigation.

 Other protesters corroborate Benitez's account, as does a sworn affidavit provided
 Benitez's law firm by a neighborhood resident, Jose Truman Acuna.

 According to a translated version of his statement, Acuna said 14 or 15 men
 emerged from the mission and ``violently attacked the demonstrators with
 punches and kicks and even a metal object'' -- said to have been a ruler. ``One of
 the men grabbed a female demonstrator who was carrying Cuban and U.S. flags
 and threw her to the pavement with great force.''

 Acuna said he calculated ``there were at least two attackers for each
 demonstrator. None of the demonstrators tried to fight back.''

 The affidavit does not provide Acuna's address, but he said the location of his
 apartment gives him a clear view of the diplomatic mission. His nationality was
 not given; Benitez said he is from Central America.

 The skirmish, which caused minor injuries to several protesters, came as the
 Elian Gonzalez case was not going well from the Cuban government's
 perspective.

 Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, had been on U.S. soil for more than a week,
 but the boy's Miami relatives seemed unwilling to transfer custody of Elian to him.

 Mission diplomats also were enraged by a video showing Elian saying, ``I don't
 want to go to Cuba. ... I want to stay here.'' The Cuban diplomats, and many
 Americans, felt the boy was coached and that his words should not be taken
 seriously.

 On April 22, eight days after the incident, the situation changed dramatically
 when immigration agents seized Elian from his Miami relatives and reunited him
 with his father.

 In cases of alleged criminal offenses by foreign diplomatic personnel, a State
 Department ``Foreign Affairs Manual'' says that the suspects are encouraged to
 waive diplomatic immunity so that the allegation may be fully adjudicated by U.S.
 authorities.

 If the waiver request is rejected, the diplomats are expelled and are barred from
 ever returning to the United States.

 It was not the first altercation involving U.S.-based Cuban diplomats.

 In August 1994, about 15 people opposed to Cuba's communist system tried to
 lock a chain across the entrance of the Cuban mission in New York. A fight
 erupted as mission employees tried to remove the chain. The following April, the
 department ordered two of the diplomats to leave the country.

 Cuba blamed the incident on American ``terrorist groups.''