Counting geodesics on compact Lie groups

We count the geodesics of a given length connecting two points of a compact connected Lie group with a biinvariant metric. We reduce the question to the maximal torus by using the lattice, the diagram and the Weyl group to count the geodesics that occur outside the maximal torus. We apply our results to give short proofs of known results on conjugate and cut points of compact semisimple Lie groups.