Reuters: "Vatican, Muslims prepare historic meeting with Pope"

Noted:

Muslim representatives and Vatican officials begin talks this week that they hope will lead to an unprecedented Catholic-Islamic meeting.

Five representatives from each side will meet on Tuesday for two days in Rome to work out the details of a larger meeting that will include Pope Benedict later this year.

Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.

Nosedived?