White House hopeful Barack Obama has landed in Berlin to begin the European leg of his international tour, ahead of November's US presidential poll. The Democratic senator is meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather later when he makes the only public speech of his tour. Barack Obama, 46, is due to visit France on Friday and Britain on Saturday. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says the Illinois senator is very popular in Germany, where surveys suggest three-quarters of people want him to be the next US president.
He says Barack Obama will be hoping that once TV pictures of him addressing cheering crowds of Berliners have been beamed back to America it will boost his image as an international statesman, and his chances of beating Republican rival John McCain this autumn. Barack Obama flew to Germany after visiting Israel and the West Bank. Security was tight for the visit, and there was one report that the hotel where Barack Obama was staying in Berlin was closed off after a suspicious package was found.
On the eve of his arrival in Berlin, Mr Obama told reporters: "Hopefully [the speech] will be viewed as a substantive articulation of the relationship I'd like to see between the United States and Europe. "I'm hoping to communicate across the Atlantic the value of that relationship and how we need to build on it."
Big crowds are expected for his evening speech - which will be shown live on German television - at the Victory Column in central Berlin's Tiergarten Park. Ms Merkel reportedly blocked his campaign team's plans for him to deliver the address at the Brandenburg Gate, which stood behind the Berlin Wall for decades as a potent symbol of the Cold War. The Gate is where President Ronald Reagan famously urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" in 1987.
President John F Kennedy - with whom Mr Obama is sometimes compared - also visited the Gate in 1963, although his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech was delivered elsewhere in the city. On Friday, Barack Obama will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris before wrapping up his tour in London by calling on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor, current international Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
Barack Obama has also visited Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan in the last few days.
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