Obama arrives in Berlin and meets with Merkel

[July 24, 2008]  BERLIN (AP) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama arrived in Berlin on Thursday, meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and kicking off the European leg of his overseas trip amid high expectations.

The German capital is the first stop on a whirlwind tour that will take the presumptive Democratic nominee to Germany, France and Britain in an effort to burnish his foreign credentials.

Shortly after landing, Obama and his retinue made their way from the Tegel Airport to the chancellery that sits across from the city's famed glass-domed Reichstag.

A column of black BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars ferried the candidate to a private meeting with Merkel that lasted about an hour. Overhead, a police helicopter kept watch. Some 700 police have been deployed during the 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," said an excited Michaela Schmid. "It was super, a real highlight."

Vernon Thomas, an 18-year-old from Omaha, Neb., who waited outside to see Obama, said he was astounded by the support for the Democrat in Germany.

"There are more people to see him here in Berlin than in my hometown," said Thomas, who said he has seen Obama speak twice in Omaha. "I think he's trying to show that he is capable of handling things overseas."

Inside the chancellery, Obama and Merkel shook hands and exchanged small talk before going into her office. They did not make a statement after their meeting.

On Wednesday, Merkel 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.

Obama's motorcade drew cheers from knots of people along his route from the government building to his hotel. As he got out of his car, one man yelled out in English, "Yes we can!" -- the senator's campaign refrain.

The chancellery is an imposing sandstone and concrete cube. The 205,000-square-foot building faces the restored Reichstag in the heart of Berlin's new government quarter. It dwarfs the White House and has more than three times the area of the French president's Elysee Palace in Paris.

Later Thursday, Obama was scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at his office in the Foreign Ministry.

But Berliners are looking to Obama's speech in front of the Tiergarten's 226-foot high Victory Column. The speech has symbolic value because several U.S. presidents -- including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- made significant addresses in Berlin.

Former German President Richard von Weizsaecker said the Obama event could help pave the way for a new trans-Atlantic relationship.

"Kennedy said the famous sentence, 'Ich bin ein Berliner,'" von Weizsaecker told the Bild newspaper. "Obama could send the Berlin signal: America is counting on Europe for its future."

"We have long believed that nobody in America is interested in our continent any more," von Weizsaecker added. "The appearance and the speech of Barack Obama are evidence that this preconception is false."

After landing at Tegel Airport, Obama's aircraft taxied by 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.

[Associated Press; By DAVID RISING and PATRICK McGROARTY]

Associated Press writer David Espo contributed to this report.

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