July 24 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama will probably use a speech in Berlin today to call on European allies to share more of the burden in Afghanistan, a demand that German Chancellor Angela Merkel may find hard to satisfy, analysts and lawmakers said.

``We may be in for a rude awakening,'' said Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a member of parliament's foreign affairs committee from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. ``Obama views cooperation as anything but a one-way street.''

The Democratic presidential candidate arrived in Berlin from Israel this morning and posed for pictures with Merkel before holding talks for about an hour. The two had a ``very open'' discussion on matters including Afghanistan and Iraq, the global economy and climate change, Merkel's spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said in a statement. Obama later met with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The focal point of his visit is what campaign aides called a ``substantive speech'' on strengthening transatlantic ties to be given at the Victory Column in central Berlin at 7 p.m. A police spokesman said ``several tens of thousands'' are expected to come to hear Obama.

``The world is hungry for a sense of where America is going,'' Obama, 46, told reporters on his plane before taking off from Tel Aviv for Berlin. In his speech, which he began writing about two weeks ago, he wants to ``communicate across the Atlantic the value of that relationship and how we can build upon it,'' the senator said.

`More Meaningful'

Obama ``wants to make the old alliances more meaningful by asking more of the allies,'' said Jan Techau, a transatlantic affairs expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. ``He will try and softly prepare the Europeans for what's going to happen as soon as he enters the White House, if he does so.''

The speech, the only address of his eight-day tour of the Middle East and Europe, follows meetings with political and military leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Amman on July 22, Obama said there was a ``growing consensus'' for his planned timeline to withdraw American combat forces from Iraq and switch military resources to Afghanistan.

Obama may demand ``greater burden-sharing'' from European allies in Afghanistan, said Eckart von Klaeden, foreign-affairs spokesman for Merkel's Christian Democrats.

Afghan Presence

That's a potential problem for Germany, which has about 3,500 military personnel based in the relatively more peaceful north of Afghanistan. While Merkel's government last month pledged to increase Germany's maximum deployment in Afghanistan to 4,500 soldiers, it's so far resisted North Atlantic Treaty Organization calls to expand its contingent to the south and east, where the U.S., the U.K., Canada and the Netherlands are bearing the brunt of the fighting against Taliban insurgents.

``I'll make clear our limitations'' on Afghanistan to Obama, Merkel told reporters in Berlin yesterday. Questions of ``how much responsibility Germany would take on military issues, and how much responsibility Europe as such would assume will emerge'' regardless of whether Obama or Arizona Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, becomes U.S. president, Merkel said.

Obama made a predawn visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall today, a symbolic gesture that capped off his trip to Israel where he repeatedly stressed his commitment to the country's security. He is scheduled to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris tomorrow before concluding his tour on July 26 in London with talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Combat Operations

During his meetings, he will likely propose closer partnership while make the case for more troops and fewer restrictions on combat operations in joint missions, the Financial Times cited Susan Rice, Obama's senior foreign-policy adviser, as saying in an interview published on July 22.

``Obama has made it very clear that he will channel the resources from Iraq into Afghanistan, because Afghanistan in his eyes is the right war to fight,'' said Techau. ``And for that right war to be successful, he will ask for more.''

Germany's U.S. ties reached a post-World War II low under Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, who refused to back President George W. Bush's war against Iraq. Merkel has since developed close links with Bush, while not shying away from calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, and pressed the U.S. into a stronger commitment on tackling climate change.

Obama Favored

Most Germans favor Obama over McCain, a Forsa poll for Stern magazine published yesterday showed. Sixty-one percent of 1,006 respondents want Obama to win the Nov. 4 presidential election. Another 46 percent said they support his policies, according to the survey, conducted July 17 and July 18. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Obama, on his first visit to Berlin, said that the speaking area was ``bigger than I realized.''

``We are sort of on the high wire all of the sudden,'' he told reporters on the plane to Berlin.

Constanze Stelzenmueller, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, said there's a danger of Germans being over-optimistic about the message Obama will deliver in Berlin.

``I'm somewhat wondering about how realistic our expectations are,'' Stelzenmueller said, adding that she expects ``nothing concrete'' in terms of policy proposals. ``Ultimately, Obama has no choice but to pursue U.S. national interests, even though he displays multilateral instincts.''

``The German public has fallen in love with Obama -- even though we may not like his message,'' said zu Guttenberg.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andreas Cremer in Berlin at acremer@bloomberg.net; Julianna Goldman with the Obama campaign via jgoldman6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 24, 2008 09:36 EDT