The US has built walls to divide Baghdad, the captured city of Iraq a country which it has colonized since 2003. It has also closed an eye on Israel’s walls that divides Palestinians from Jews in Israel and in occupied Palestine. Tear these walls first then look forward to the tearing of other ‘virtual’ walls Mr. Obama, said observers to WFOL.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," he said, referring to festering divisions between Europe and the United States opened up by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand.

"The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down," Obama said in a speech covered live on German and US television.

"The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another," said Obama.

The Democratic White House candidate warned, near the footprint of the old Berlin Wall, that humanity must build "a world that stands as one,"

This refrain echoed former US president Ronald Reagan's call to then Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev in Berlin in 1987 to "tear down this wall," before the fall of Communism.

Obama's speech, before the Victory Column in Berlin's famed Tiergarten, took the White House race abroad in a way never seen before, and confirmed Obama as a global political phenomenon.

It came during a Middle East and Europe tour designed to calm the fears of those Americans who fear he is too inexperienced to be president.

Obama, who trails McCain when voters are asked who would be the most credible commander in chief, used Berlin's triumph over division and totalitarianism as a metaphor for the world he hoped to forge.

"People of the world -- look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one," Obama said.

In a speech that risked being seen as presumptuous, considering Obama will not even face US voters for another three months, he warned of a world where partnership was not a choice but the only means of survival.

"We cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone," he said.

He promised America under his watch would be serious about tackling global warming, a huge concern in Europe and a cause of rifts between the continent and the United States during the Bush administration.

But Europe must live up to its side of the bargain, he said, asking for more help in the struggle against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He also demanded more help for Iraqi civilians, for an effort to solve Myanmar's political agony and a new drive for Middle East peace, an attempt to settle the Darfur crisis and a battle against nuclear proliferation.

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