The Obama campaign held a conference today call to discuss the senator’s upcoming trip to the Middle East and Europe. According to the foreign press, Obama will arrive in Jordan early next week, but until now the campaign has refused to discuss any details of the trip on the record.

Several of Obama’s top foreign policy advisors were on today’s call to talk about the purpose of the trip and with whom the Illinois senator would meet on his trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and the UK. Included on that list: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Opposition Leader David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Chimon Perez, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the campaign continues to refuse to discuss the dates and locations of any of the planned stops, presumably for safety concerns, and will not say where the meeting with the Palestinian Authority leaders will take place.

According to advisor Susan Rice, Obama will exchange views with these leaders on issues critical to national and global security in order to deepen relationships and explore concretely a way to discuss cooperation on these challenges.

Rice added that “it’s important to note that it is not our intent to make policy or to negotiate, we won’t do so. There’s one President of the United States at any given time and we will certainly honor and respect that.” But, she said, the candidate may “underscore” the message to leaders that “stepped up U.S. contribution should be met with a stepped up NATO contribution to the extent possible” in Afghanistan.

The campaign is not calling this a campaign event - even though the candidate will be joined by at least 19 media outlets along the way. “The trip is not at all a campaign trip, a rally of any sort. It’s …a series of substantive meetings with our friends and our allies to talk about the common challenges that we face and the national security dangers for the 21st century,” Robert Gibbs said on the call.

In fact the only speech-like event the campaign will discuss is the much talked about Berlin event, where the candidate will “underscore our shared values and our shared goals” to the German people.

The German press originally reported the Democrat would speak at Brandenburg Gate, which then was quickly made off limits by the German government. Today the Obama campaign would not confirm or deny the latest speculations on where the speech may take place, only that they were looking for a location that “meets our needs and our German hosts’ needs and interests.”

The campaign declined to say how long this trip has been in the making, but said Senator Obama reached out to Secretary Rice about his trip and that the two had “a very productive conversation.” The campaign has been relying on help from US embassies in each of the countries they are planning to visit.

GRAND HAVEN, MI — While his campaign opened up a new front on Sen. Barack Obama today in calling his planned trip abroad an international “campaign rally,” it seemed initially today that Sen. McCain was contradicting his own message.

During an interview with Fox News Channel today, McCain Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker attacked Obama’s upcoming trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and a number of European nations.

“Let’s drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is–the first of its kind campaign rally overseas,” she said in a clip the campaign put up on You Tube and sent out to reporters (above). During a later appearance on MSNBC she also called the trip “one giant photo opportunity…not designed to inform his world view.”

But when he was asked about the comments aboard his bus this afternoon, McCain appeared to disagree with Hazelbaker’s statement.

“I’m glad that he is (traveling overseas) and pleased that he is going to Iraq for only the second time and going to Afghanistan for the first time,” McCain said. “I can only give you my opinion, and I will talk to (Hazelbaker). But the fact is, I’m glad that he’s going to Iraq and I think it’s - I’m glad that he’s going to Afghanistan. It’s long, long overdue, if you want to lead this nation and secure our national security.”

The dissonant message led the campaign to organize an impromptu outdoor press conference this afternoon so McCain could clear it up once in for all. His message: the Iraqi and Afghanistan legs of Obama’s trip seem legitimate while the European portion appears to be a photo opportunity.

“As we all know Senator Obama is about to go on a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and I understand other countries. The focus of our conversation today on the bus was about Iraq and Afghanistan and what Senator Obama does in the other countries, whether political rallies or not, obviously would then give them a political flavor to say the least,” McCain told reporters after a quick campaign stop at Pronto Pup, a local corn dog joint in Western Michigan.

“If he has political rallies in other places, then obviously it’s a political trip….apparently it’s gonna be (a photo opportunity) if he is going to have rally in Germany at the Brandenburg Gate, which is what is being publicly stated. Of course if you have political rallies then its a political event,” he added.

When rumors swirled that Barack Obama would speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, during his European trip next week, it was reported that someone in the Bush Administration approached a German official at the G8 Summit in Japan to question the appropriateness of the location of the Democrat’s remarks.

The German press soon reported that German Chancellor Andrea Merkel deemed the location, one of the last remaining points connecting East and West Germany, off limits for an Obama stop – not because of Bush’s concerns, but as a matter of fairness. If Obama spoke there, then any candidate running for any office, in any country around the world may want to speak there.

Today the candidate told reporters aboard his campaign plane that his campaign has been “trying to coordinate with folks on the ground in terms of finding an appropriate site, but we didn’t have a particular site in mind.”

Obama said getting his message out is more important than the location of the speech. “Our goal is just for me to lay out how I think about the next administration’s role and rebuilding our transatlantic alliance and so I don’t want to the negative to be a distraction. What I want to do is just work with folks on the ground to find some place that’s appropriate,” Obama said.

Earlier this week at a town hall in Virginia, Obama gave a sneak preview of that message. “Although our military power is unmatched, the real challenges, the real threats, that face not just our security but world security today can’t be solved just by one country because they span the globe…We’ve got to worry about and spend time thinking about building alliances and restoring relationships with countries all around the world in order to deal with our national security,” he said, prefacing that he didn’t want to “spill” too much about the top secret trip.

The campaign has not made announcements on the specifics of Obama’s visit to Germany.