IAEA Safeguards - Status and Prospects

The present status of IAEA safeguards is primarily the result of events which took place during the last decade. It is the starting point of any analysis of future trends in the field of non-proliferation. The end of the last decade was marked, from the point of view of safeguards and non-proliferation by two events of considerable significance: the IKFCE and the Second KPT Review Conference. While the Conference dealt primarily with political issues and IKFCE with technical ones, the underlying concerns and trends were common to both. At the risk of oversimplifying the problem I would like to list the conclusions one can draw from the deliberations of these two conferences and from related events: