After 20 months in office, Ban has yet to score diplomatic breakthroughs in any of the world's hot spots, as efforts to halt bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region and affect change in Myanmar have produced few tangible results, The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) reported Monday.

The newspaper said the United Nations has been reduced to a marginal player in conflicts in Kenya and Zimbabwe and Ban has incurred the wrath of Russia by issuing a call to protect Georgia's territorial integrity.

Sources say diplomats from the United States, Britain, Singapore and other countries are also displeased by Ban's refusal to travel to Myanmar, the former Burma, and meet military ruler Gen. Than Shwe to urge him to release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.

"No one is going to make a case that we are in the middle of a big diplomatic breakthrough on some of these cases you've mentioned," Robert Orr, a special adviser to Ban, told the Post. "But ... the secretary-general's style is to work very hard, persistently, behind the scenes."