From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

Is there a new road to Middle East peace?

Hello again, I'm Warren Alney, and this is To the Poet from Public Radio International.

The daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

Prime Minister

Netanyahu is focused on Iran's nuclear program. President Obama wants Palestinian peace talks to start

up again. So begins a new period of Middle East diplomacy, including multiple White House visits

and a speech to the Muslim world when Obama goes to Egypt next month. Today, the new leader of Israel sat down

with the new leader of the United States without either apparently ready to show his hand.

We'll hear about their differences as well as their common interests in terms of domestic

politics and foreign affairs. On reporter's notebook later on, the Bush administration and the

Rumsfeld legacy. First, here's the news.

Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from the Public Radio International Program Fund,

whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur

Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to the idea that all people

deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive life. Information at gatesfoundation.org.

Hello again. Warren Alney, back with To the Poet. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is at the

White House today for the first in a string of meetings that will help define President Obama's policies in the Middle East. We'll hear what happens today. On reporter's notebook, former Bush aides, take aim at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. First is news update. The Army of Sri Lanka, the island nation off the southeast tip of India, has killed the leader of one of the world's deadliest guerrilla armies.

The Tamil Tigers invented the suicide belt and murdered many public officials,

including India's former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

Jeffrey Lundsted is a former ambassador to Sri Lanka.

He's now a visiting professor of South Asian Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont.

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