  The recent X-ray and CO observations of RX J1713.7-3946 show that a
significant fraction of the nonthermal X-ray emission of this unique supernova
remnant associates, in one way or another, with a molecular cloud interacting
with the west part of the shell. This adds a new puzzle in the origin of X-ray
emission which cannot be easily explained within the standard model in
accordance of which X-rays are result of synchrotron radiation of multi-TeV
electrons accelerated by supernova shock waves. We explore an alternative
origin of the X-ray emission assuming that it is produced by secondary
electrons resulting from high energy hadronic interactions in the molecular
gas. Such a scenario could explain in a quite natural way the apparent
correlation between the X-ray and CO morphologies. However, the TeV gamma-ray
emission recently reported by H.E.S.S. significantly constrains the parameter
space of this model. Namely, this mechanism cannot reproduce the bulk of the
observed X-ray flux unless one postulates existence of a PeV cosmic-ray
component penetrating with an unusually hard spectrum into the dense cloud.
