After leaving the climate talks in Bali, Ban Ki Moon will make a trip around the world to attend half a concert in New York.

The UN Secretary-General is due to stop in East Timor and Japan before Monday's meeting of the Middle East Quartet in Paris. He plans to travel the wrong way around the world in a jumbo jet to put in a brief appearance at a Korean concert at Carnegie Hall.

Aides say that Mr Ban will fly from Tokyo to New York to attend the $1,000-a-seat benefit for the South Korean Sejong Centre for the Performing Arts. Mr Ban, the guest of honour, will arrive in time for the reception but will have to leave at the interval for his flight to Paris. The concert by the International Sejong Soloists, including the soprano Hyunah Yu, is titled Around the World in Eighty Minutes.

The stop will add about 4,300 miles to Mr Ban's itinerary and generate about 1,684lb extra of CO2 emissions for each member of his delegation.

Background

• UN chief to return to Bali climate talks

• Al Gore: free of diplomatic niceties

• Al Gore lambasts US climate obstructions

• Scorching decade claims eight hottest years

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• This decade breaks records in table of world's hottest years

Background

• US rejects Bali climate change guidelines

• UN chief: act now on climate or face oblivion

• Al Gore calls for climate ‘mobilisation’

• Carbon emissions are 'higher than claimed'

• A convenient £50m for green Gore

Multimedia

• Video: protests in Bali

• Video: Going green with God

• The environment - 2007 in pictures

Background

• Carbon stand-off puts climate talks at risk

• US 'must change lifestyle' for planet's sake

• Woodman, spare that high-carbon tree

• Act now or prepare for disaster

US laws will sap Europe’s energy

There is a serious danger that the politics of the American cornfield are again threatening trade and development

Background

• Water shortages 'likely trigger for wars'

• Global crisis reveals big cracks in policies

• UN climate circus rolls in on CO2 cloud

• Carbon Trust not meeting the challenge

We’re not doomed yet

Should we really be listening to the views of one man just because they are eye-catchingly more dramatic than the consensus?

Background

• Brown’s bid to seal fate of carrier bags

• Opec ponders wealth of alternatives

• Climate change panel verdict: the future is bleak

• A global warning for UN chief

Related Links

• Carbon emissions are 'higher than claimed'

Officials say that today in Bali the UN will announce plans to offset the carbon emissions of all its agencies involved in the conference by contributing to “green” projects. It estimates the cost of its off-setting at $18 a tonne of CO2 produced. At that rate, the cost of off-setting Mr Ban's extra mileage to attend the concert in New York would be $13.50 a head.

Mr Ban has been criticised within the UN for paying such attention to South Korea since becoming the world's top civil servant. Insiders speculate that he or his chief of staff, Kim Won Soo, harbour political ambitions in their homeland.

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