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Obama arrives in Berlin, kicking off the European tour
US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in Berlin on Thursday, kicking off the European leg of his overseas trip amid high expectations.
- AP
- Published: 14:04 July 24, 2008
- US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is welcomed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 24, 2008. In the background is the the Reichstag that houses the German parliament.
- Image Credit:
Berlin: US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in Berlin on Thursday, kicking off the European leg of his overseas trip amid high expectations.
It is the first stop on a tour that will also take Obama to France and Britain in an effort to burnish his foreign credentials as he campaigns against Republican Sen. John McCain for the US presidency.
Obama arrived in the German capital following visits to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Jordan.
While in Berlin, Obama will meet with German leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
He will cap his day with an open-air speech before an expected crowd of at least 100,000 that his campaign has described as a "substantive address on US-European relations."
Shortly after arriving, Obama and his retinue made their way from Tegel Airport to the chancellery, which sits across from the city's famed glass-domed Riechstag.
Merkel has told reporters that she planned to talk about climate change and global free trade with Obama and made clear that Germany will stand by its refusal to send combat troops to southern Afghanistan.
Around 700 police officers have been deployed during Obama's visit, which lasts through Friday morning.
Obama paused inside the gates of the chancellery to wave at a group of Bavarian 11th-graders whose class happened to be ending its tour of the building as he was arriving.
"We were really close," an excited Michaela Schmid said. "It was super, a real highlight."
Inside, Obama and Merkel shook hands and exchanged small talk just outside her office before heading behind closed doors for their private meeting.
The chancellery is an imposing sandstone-and-concrete cube. The 205,000-square-foot building, designed by Axel Schultes, faces the restored Reichstag in the heart of Berlin's new government quarter.
The building dwarfs the White House and has more than three times the area of the French president's Elysee Palace in Paris.
Obama will meet with Steinmeier at his office in the Foreign Ministry later on Thursday.
Berliners are looking to Obama's speech in front of the Tiergarten's 225-foot high Victory Column, which has symbolic value because several US presidents - including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - made significant addresses in Berlin.
Former German President Richard von Weizsaecker said that the Obama event could help pave the way for a new trans-Atlantic relationship, according to a newspaper report.
"Kennedy said the famous sentence: 'Ich bin ein Berliner' - Obama could send the Berlin signal: America is counting on Europe for its future," he was quoted as saying by the Bild newspaper on Thursday.
"We have long believed that nobody in America is nterested in our continent any more," he said in further quotes attributed to him. "The appearance and the speech of Barack Obama are evidence that this preconception is false."
After landing at Tegel Airport, his aircraft taxied beside the soon-to-depart plane of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who visited Berlin this week for talks aimed at luring German companies to invest in his country.
Obama met with al-Maliki in Baghdad earlier this week during the Middle East part of his tour.
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