White House hopeful Barack Obama is heading to Berlin to begin the European leg of his international tour ahead of November's US presidential poll.

The Democratic senator will meet Chancellor Angela Merkel during a morning meeting, followed by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

He is later due to give a speech on transatlantic ties that is expected to draw tens of thousands of people.

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The BBC's Steve Rosenberg, in Berlin, says Mr Obama is very popular in Germany, where surveys suggest three-quarters of people want him to be the next US president.

He says Mr 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.

Before leaving Israel for 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 the Illinois senator's evening speech at the Victory Column in central Berlin's Tiergarten Park.

Ms Merkel 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.

Mr Obama has also visited Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan on his foreign tour.

(BBC)

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