Obama to speak at Berlin's victory statue

BERLIN, July 18 (UPI) -- Presumptive Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is to speak at the Victory Column in Berlin next week, not the Brandenburg Gate.

The gate is one of the German capital's best-known symbols. President John Kennedy visited the gate in 1963, and Ronald Reagan spoke there when he urged "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Chancellor Angela Merkel had suggested that Obama should not give what amounts to a campaign speech at the gate, Deutsche Welle reported.

The 200-foot-high column, carrying a statue of the Roman goddess of Victory, is more than a mile from the gate on the major route from the gate to the western part of the city.

Thousands of people are expected to come to hear Obama. A recent poll showed that 72 percent of Germans would vote for him if they could.

Berlin is to be Obama's final stop on a tour that includes Iraq and Afghanistan.