BERLIN (AFP) - US presidential hopeful Barack Obama discussed global hotspots Thursday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of a foreign policy speech before tens of thousands in the heart of Berlin.

Obama, who arrived from Israel, joined Merkel at her ultra-modern chancellery at the start of a European tour aimed at burnishing his foreign policy credentials.

The Illinois senator also saw Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit before the keenly-awaited speech. Crowds started gathering in the late morning near the venue in the Tiergarten park.

The presumptive Democratic candidate wants the United States and Europe to rediscover their common ground, he told reporters travelling with him.

"Obviously Berlin is representative of the extraordinary success of the post World War II effort to bring the continent together and to bring the West together, and later to bring the East and the West together," he said.

"So I think it is a natural place to talk."

Obama and the chancellor touched on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East peace process as well as climate protection and the global economic crisis in an hour-long conversation, according to Merkel's spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm.

Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs called the talks "warm and productive" and said they had focused in particular on "the urgency of stopping Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons".

Gibbs said the meeting with Steinmeier also covered Obama's commitment to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime and his concerns about rising tensions between Russia and Georgia, which the minister visited last week.

The senator earlier sought to tamp down expectations he would seek to match the rhetorical heights of late president John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech to the then-divided city in 1963, or former Republican president Ronald Reagan's 1987 call to "Tear down this wall" in his address.

"They were presidents, I am a citizen," he said.

Obama also defended himself against claims he is defying convention by electioneering abroad, saying he wanted to speak to the whole of Europe and so needed a big venue.

Germans have closely followed the US election campaign. The vast majority -- 76 percent, according to one recent poll -- would vote for Obama if they could, versus just 10 percent for his Republican rival John McCain.

The 46-year-old senator has frequently drawn comparisons with Kennedy, who was the same age when he electrified this embattled city.

Newspaper seller Klaus Schlicht, 49, who had put out an American flag for the occasion, said he saw a little of the late president in the "young and dynamic" Obama.

"After all these years of George Bush, there will be better relations between the US and Europe" if Obama wins in November, he told AFP.

Europeans are looking to Obama to improve the transatlantic relationship that conservative leaders such as Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have only just managed to mend.

But commentators warned that Obama would expect more of the continent if elected, including a stronger military commitment in Afghanistan, where he started his tour Saturday.

"More international coordination means more European engagement in hotspots," the Handelsblatt business daily wrote.

Merkel said Wednesday that Germany had no plans to commit more troops to fight the Taliban.

The chancellor also brushed aside a flap over her objection to Obama's initial wish to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German unity, saying she took the "perhaps a bit old-fashioned" view that the landmark should be reserved for presidents in office.

Obama will instead speak at the Victory Column, a 19th century monument to the defeats of France, Austria and Denmark in successive wars and more recently, a venue for the wildly popular Love Parade techno parties.

The senator will continue on to Paris to meet Sarkozy on Friday, followed by a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London Saturday.

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