BERLIN - Barack Obama's campaign says he will give a speech on the future of transatlantic relations in front of a Prussian war monument in downtown Berlin, in view of the historic Brandenburg Gate.

The announcement that he will speak at the Victory Column has ended weeks of speculation here.

It also triggered criticism that the nearly 70-metre column built in 1873 to celebrate Prussian war victories over Denmark, Austria and France was an inappropriate choice.

One of Berlin's best-known monuments, the column is topped by a golden, winged figure representing Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory.

It stood in front of Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, until the late 1930s.

That's when Adolf Hitler's architect Albert Speer moved it to its current location in the middle of the Tiergarten park as part of uncompleted plans for a grandiose remake of the capital.

Since German reunification, the column, also known as the Siegessaeule, has become the central location for Berliners to party.

About two kilometres away is Pariser Platz square and the Brandenburg Gate. Obama had wanted to give the speech there, but Chancellor Angela Merkel quashed the idea.

She defended her criticism of that location on Sunday, telling ARD television that the Brandenburg Gate - the backdrop for speeches by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - is linked to U.S. presidents.

"If the candidate - or any other candidate - is elected, then (he) is welcome to speak as president before the Brandenburg Gate," Merkel said, indicating that Obama's Republican rival for the presidency, Senator John McCain, would be equally welcome.

Merkel declined, however, to comment on the Siegessaeule, saying only that "the team has made its decision and that will be approved and now we will take this location for what it is."

Others were more critical.

"I ask myself whether Obama was well advised to choose the Siegessaeule as a place for a speech on his vision for global co-operation," Rainer Bruederle of the opposition Free Democrats was quoted as telling the Bild am Sonntag weekly.

Obama was in Afghanistan on Sunday as part of a tour abroad that also will take him to Iraq and the Middle East. After speaking in Berlin on Thursday he is to visit France and England.

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