HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Russian state oil company Zarubezhneft signed contracts with Cuba on Tuesday to search for oil along Cuba's northern coast and said it was looking at procuring more areas for exploration in a step forward for the island's oil hopes.

Zarubezhneft signed up with state-owned Cuba Petroleos for four almost contiguous blocks, two onshore and two offshore in the Gulf of Mexico just east of Cuba's most prolific oil field in Varadero.

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's energy minister on Tuesday lowered the South American OPEC member's 2015 oil capacity target by 13 percent, but remained upbeat on expansion overall, especially in the Orinoco heavy oil belt.

Rafael Ramirez told an oil conference on the island of Margarita that Venezuela's capacity should rise from 3.0 million barrels per day now to 4.25 million bpd by 2015.

SAN ANTONIO, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuelan soldiers blocked the main border crossing with Colombia on Tuesday after President Hugo Chavez's government said paramilitaries were behind the killing of two soldiers.

In the latest violence in an often lawless region between the Andean neighbors, a gang of four men on motorbikes ambushed and shot dead the Venezuelan soldiers at a checkpoint in western Tachira state on Monday.

LA CEIBA: Garifuna leader Céleo Alvarez Casildo recognizes that the imminent restitution of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales is an important step toward returning peace to the nation, but he says that the crisis isn't totally resolved.

"The simple fact that there is a written agreement between parties in conflict really doesn't resolve the crisis that inflicts the Honduran people," said the leader, who was national president of the Medical Workers Union (Sitramedhys) in the 1980s.