Obama speech expected to draw huge crowd in Berlin
BERLIN (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Barack Obama travels to Berlin on Thursday to give the only public speech of a week-long foreign tour, an outdoor address on transatlantic ties that is likely to draw tens of thousands.
Highly popular in Germany, where he is often likened to former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the Democratic senator will also meet for the first time Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opposed his initial plan to speak at the Brandenburg Gate.
Instead, Obama will give his evening address at the "Victory Column" in Berlin's central Tiergarten park, down the road but still within sight of the Gate, a landmark that stood behind the Berlin Wall for decades as a potent symbol of the Cold War.
"This is a substantive speech about the need to strengthen transatlantic relations in order to confront the challenges of the 21st century as effectively as we worked together in the 20th," an Obama campaign spokeswoman said.
"Senator Obama will not discuss the American election. Instead, he will outline the critical goals that Europe and the United States can achieve together in the world."
Relations between the United States and Germany reached a post-war low under Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, who strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But the conservative Merkel, who grew up behind the Wall in the communist East, has worked hard to repair ties and emerged as one of President George W. Bush's closest allies in Europe.
She said on the eve of Obama's visit that she expected to discuss NATO cooperation, climate change and trade issues with the Illinois senator during a morning meeting at the Chancellery that German officials have said will last about an hour.
They are also expected to discuss Afghanistan and Iraq, the countries where Obama started his Middle East and European tour.
In Kabul on Sunday, Obama described the situation in Afghanistan as precarious and urgent.
LIMITS
He and his Republican challenger for president John McCain have both said Europe must step up its efforts there, but Merkel told reporters on Wednesday that she would tell Obama there were limits to what Germany could do.
The Obama visit has dominated the newspaper headlines in Germany for weeks, even sparking sharp exchanges between Merkel and her foreign minister over whether a speech at the Brandenburg Gate was appropriate.
Merkel has said the landmark -- where President Ronald Reagan famously urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" -- is a place for presidents, not candidates to speak. Her advisers tried to convince the Obama campaign to hold the speech at a university or other low-key location.
Around 700 policemen will be in place for the visit and city workers have been setting up barriers around the "Siegessaeule", a 230 foot (70 meter) high column built to celebrate 19th century Prussian military victories over Denmark, France and Austria, since Monday.
Crowd forecasts vary widely, ranging from 10,000 to nearly a million. German public television station ARD will broadcast the full 45-minute speech, which starts at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT), live.
A Pew Research Center poll showed Germans favored Obama over McCain by a 49 point margin. Influential weekly Der Spiegel dedicated its weekend issue to the visit, putting a picture of Obama on the cover and the title "Germany meets the Superstar".
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; edited by Richard Meares)
