Celebration and solemnity as Obama nears inauguration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama approached his inauguration as the 44th U.S. president with a mix of solemnity and celebration on Sunday, laying a wreath at a military grave before attending an open-air concert featuring James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen and Mary J. Blige.

The events reflected popular excitement about his choice as the first black U.S. president tempered by the fact that the United States is fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and confronts its worst economic crisis since the Depression.

Walking side by side, Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden placed a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns, whose centrepiece is a marble sarcophagus above the grave of an unidentified World War One soldier.

Joined by tens of thousands of Americans, Obama and Biden later braved a cold winter's day to take in a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the neoclassical temple that honours 16th U.S. president who led the country during the civil war and ended slavery in America.

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their daughters Malia and Sasha, Obama nodded and clapped along at the concert, which included Springsteen performing his song "The Rising," Mary J. Blige singing "Lean on Me" and James Taylor singing his hit "Shower the People."

Spliced between the songs, actors Denzel Washington, Laura Linney and Tom Hanks gave speeches that evoked past crises in U.S. history, including the Civil War, the Depression and the Cold War.

As Obama, an Illinois Democrat, prepared to take the oath of office on Tuesday, his top aides gave TV interviews that emphasized his plans to quell the financial crisis that began in the United States and has spread around the world.

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December, its highest level in nearly 16 years, and 2.6 million people in the United States have lost their jobs in the last year, the largest employment slump since 1945.

NO QUICK FIX FOR ECONOMY

"These problems weren't made in a week or a year and they're not going to be fixed in a week or a month or a year," Lawrence Summers, the incoming director of the White House National Economic Council, said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"There is no question, almost no question, that the economy is going to decline for some time to come," he added.

Obama has vowed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to jolt the country out of a deepening recession. A New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday showed Americans were confident he could turn the economy around and were prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces.

Obama has said he wants to bring U.S. combat forces out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, but his ability to do so hinges on violence in the country continuing to decline and on the capabilities of Iraqi security forces.

He has also has committed to sending more U.S. forces to Afghanistan to tackle insurgent violence that has risen in recent years.

"Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast," he said on Saturday as he began a train journey from Philadelphia to Washington.

"A nation at war, an economy in turmoil, an American Dream that feels like its slipping away," Obama, who campaigned on a slogan of "Change we can believe in," added.

Becky Kusar, 29, a Democrat who voted for Obama and was visiting Washington with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, expressed both enthusiasm about Obama's election as well as anxiety about the economy and the war in Iraq.

"It's been scary," she said of the economic downturn. "I am really hoping that he has the actions to back up what he is saying.

Her husband, Carl, a Republican who did not vote for Obama was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "You've got to give everybody a chance, is what I say."

Thousands of people have begun streaming into Washington for the inauguration, which is expected to be viewed by 1 million people from the National Mall, a vast green surrounded by museums and monuments.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Nancy Waitz and Jim Wolf)

(Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Jackie Frank)