Mr. Ban will also visit Tripoli, Libya, to meet with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, whom Mr. Ban called an "important regional player" in the Darfur crisis and credited with helping stage critical meetings and bringing rebel groups into negotiations.
As Ukraine's appetite for the bloody fight to win back the Donbass region wanes, Russia is attempting to deal with the situation by dispatching top officials to Donbass on secret visits and bringing rebel leaders to Russia for consultations.
And there has been plenty of improvisation along the way, not least when Bernard-Henri Lévy, a celebrity philosopher who had visited eastern Libya, brought rebel representatives to the Elysée palace.But, for once, Mr Sarkozy's personal and France's national interests may coincide.
After all, the tradeoff that brought rebel rule has also translated into a measure of calm for at least one region of a country considered the hemisphere's most violent, a rugged land where assassinations and robberies that end in murder are all too commonplace.
In March, the Colombian army intercepted a truck which was apparently bringing rebel supplies from Venezuela.
If London does evacuate its embassy, it will be seen as a humiliation for David Cameron, who along with Nicolas Sarkozy, then French president, was the prime mover in the Nato bombing campaign that brought rebels victory against Muammar Gaddafi three years ago.
