Brandenburg Gate Speech-Obama Examines Other Options

American presidential candidate Barack Obama is trying to lessen the tensions in the German government caused by the announcement that he planned to speak at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. “We’re currently looking for alternative speaking locations in Berlin,” said Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, in a New York Times report. “We’ll choose the location that makes the most sense,” he added, with no further details.

Gibbs was reacting to the dispute between Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD). The chancellor had announced her opposition to Obama’s July 24th speaking plans at the symbolic Berlin landmark saying it should not be used as a backdrop for U.S. electioneering.

Steinmeier doesn’t share Merkel’s concerns

Steinmeier, on the other hand, said that he saw such a speech as, “a living expression of German-American friendship,” and as such, didn’t share Merkel’s objections. According to SPD foreign policy spokesman Gert Weisskirchen, Obama’s campaign team is also open to presenting the speech at Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt. Weiskirchen made the statement to the daily newspaper “Die Welt,” referring to a conversation with one of Obama’s advisors.

Steinmeier fears that Obama could actually be discouraged from coming to Berlin because of the current dispute. “The Americans made a definitive contribution to saving the city of Berlin, therefore we should allow them to make public appearances at historic sites such as the Brandenburg Gate,” he told the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau. SPD General Secretary Hubertus Heil was quoted by the newspaper “Tagesspiegel” as saying that the Chancellor “shouldn’t carp about something as petty as calling this pure political campaigning.”

Wowereit: “Merkel is letting herself be exploited.”

Berlin’s governing mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) criticized Merkel’s rejection of an Obama speech at the Brandenburg Gate. Wowereit made the conjecture that Merkel, while attending the G-8 summit in Japan, had been approached on President Bush’s behalf. “She shouldn’t allow herself to be exploited,” said Wowereit.

Wowereit affirmed his positive opinion of Obama’s visit and referred to Merkel’s visit to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003: “She shouldn’t be throwing stones as long as she lives in a glass house,” he said, adding that Merkel knows how to campaign on foreign soil. But at the time of her visit she wasn’t campaigning, having been elected chancellor some two and a half years later.

Mrs. Merkel visited the United States twice when she was a member of the opposition party. She was received in 2001 and 2003 by Vice President Dick Cheney but not by Bush himself. Wowereit told the newspaper “Berliner Zeitung” that in the future the Berlin senate, not the individual district offices, should have the authority to permit activities at prominent Berlin locations.

Walter Momper (SPD), President of the Berlin House of Representatives, criticized the intrusion of the federal government in the affair saying, “The federal government and Chancellor Merkel have no jurisdiction over this.” He told the newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung he would welcome Obama’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, saying it would be “a great testimonial for Germany and Berlin.”