March 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has no plans to lift its trade embargo on Cuba, Vice President Joe Biden told reporters today after a heads-of-government meeting in Chile.

“We think the Cuban people should determine their own fate and that they should be able to live in freedom and with some prospect of economic prosperity,” Biden said. “But Cuba is not the biggest challenge facing the hemisphere, the biggest challenge facing the hemisphere is the economy.”

Latin American leaders at next month’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago will press President Barack Obama to ease the sanctions, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on March 17. Recasting policy on Cuba would help ease U.S. relations with Latin America, at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War, a Washington-based policy group, Inter-American Dialogue said this month.

Biden was responding to questions after the summit meeting, billed as a chance for “progressive” politicians to hammer out a common position ahead of a meeting of leaders of the G20 world’s biggest economies in London on April 2. Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva, who attended the conference in Vina del Mar, Chile, today, has also pushed for an end to the embargo.

Global Coordination

Leaders including U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg discussed the need for international coordination of banking regulation and the possibility of pumping more money into organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet, who hosted today’s meeting, said.

The U.S. supports increasing the sway of emerging-market governments in international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, Biden said.

The global economic crisis offers an opportunity to recalibrate “international financial institutions from the World Bank to the regional banks to the International Monetary Fund so that emerging economies can have a bigger say,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sebastian Boyd in Santiago at sboyd9@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 28, 2009 15:59 EDT