HAVANA -- Several dozen dissidents commemorating a deadly 1994 tugboat sinking clashed Wednesday with a larger group of government supporters who shoved them and shouted them down.

International reporters, including an Associated Press Television News team, witnessed at least two dissidents being detained after the run-in near Havana's Central Park. No major injuries were reported.

The midday incident occurred after the dissidents tossed flowers into the ocean from Havana's coastal highway to remember the 41 would-be immigrants who drowned 11 years ago in a tugboat sinking in Havana Bay.

The dissidents were walking inland along Prado, a major boulevard in central Havana, when government supporters began shouting revolutionary slogans at them. Several dissidents were shoved, but no one was reported hurt.

Journalists saw dissidents Manuel Perez and Lazaro Alonso put into vehicles after they spoke to the reporters by men who appeared to be plainclothes police officers. It was not immediately known if they were formally arrested.

``What motivated us to this was to commemorate those who died trying to escape Cuba,'' Perez told journalists earlier.

``We are in mourning,'' added Alonso.

The dissidents carried signs with photographs of people who died in the tugboat sinking, which opponents blame on the government. Authorities maintain it was an accident.

``Victims of a cruel tyranny that calls itself the defender of Cuban women and children,'' the signs read.

Cubans trying to leave the island with their families seized the government-owned wooden craft on July 13, 1994 and were chased 7 miles out to sea by three steel-hulled tugboats.

Survivors said the pursuing government boats used high-pressure water hoses and deliberately rammed the wooden craft. Cuba's communist government has said the boats accidentally collided.

``We are revolutionaries,'' said Martha Torres, among several hundred government supporters who confronted the opponents on Wednesday. ``We are here to respond to these dissidents who sell out their nation.''

The gathering drew the attention of local leaders, with Havana Mayor Juan Contino and Havana's Communist Party chief Pedro Sainz showing up at the scene. Neither spoke with reporters.

The Miami-based Democracy Movement, a Cuban exile group, said it would remember the sinking with a Mass at a bayfront church.

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