HAVANA--U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker told Cuban officials on Wednesday that Washington wants to promote the Communist country's nascent private sector in order to maximize trade and build on newly restored diplomatic relations.
  Pritzker, part of the family that created the Hyatt hotel fortune, met with two Cuban ministers and one of its vice presidents on a two-day mission to learn more about the Cuban economy and explain Obama's recent relaxation of the U.S. trade embargo.
  In remarks to Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca and other officials, Pritzker said the lives of ordinary Cubans would only see improvement if Cuban President Raul Castro's market-oriented reforms were extended. "We urge President Castro and his government to make it easier for Cuban citizens to trade and travel more freely, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to access the Internet, and to be hired directly by foreign companies," Pritzker said.
  In Cuba's Soviet-style economy, Castro has permitted much of agriculture to leave state control and form cooperatives while allowing small private businesses to thrive. A foreign investment law passed last year offers tax breaks, but the Cuban state retains a majority stake in most ventures and controls the hiring of workers. Cuba has yet to allow foreign technology companies to wire the island, leaving it with the worst Internet access in the Americas.
  Some 500,000 of Cuba's 11 million people are authorized to work as private contractors. The Obama administration's measures have been aimed at helping them over the still-dominant state sector.
  Pritzker repeated President Barack Obama's calls on the U.S. Congress to completely lift the embargo. Obama could use his executive authority to further chip away at the embargo, but Pritzker declined to say what Cuba might do to encourage that. "That's the president's decision. Our job at the Department of Commerce is to give the president options," she told reporters at the end of her two-day trip. "For us to suggest more options, we need to better understand the (Cuban) system."
  Obama and Castro shocked the world with their December 2014 announcement that the two former adversaries would end more than half a century of hostility and restore diplomatic relations.
  Secretary of State John Kerry came to Havana to open the new U.S. embassy in August. Pritzker is the first cabinet secretary to arrive since then and the first commerce secretary to visit Cuba since 1950.