Introduction What is Being Done to Halt the Further Spread of Nuclear Weapons? Why Are IAEA Safeguards Important? What Assurances Do Safeguards Seek to Provide? How Are Safeguards Agreements Implemented? What Specific Challenges Have There Been for IAEA Verification? Can the IAEA Prevent the Diversion of Declared Material? How Has the Safeguards System Been Strengthened? How Much Do Safeguards Cost? What is the Future of IAEA Verification? Conclusion Further Reading		Why Are IAEA Safeguards Important? The international community has entrusted the IAEA with carrying out independent inspections of all nuclear material and facilities subject to safeguards agreements in order to verify compliance with non-proliferation commitments. IAEA's Statute authorized it "toestablish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable* and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose; and to apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement, or at the request of a State, to any of that State's activities in the field of atomic energy." Thus, IAEA safeguards are a set of activities by which the Agency seeks to verify that a State is not using nuclear material or equipment to develop or produce nuclear weapons. Safeguards are not directly linked with either the safety of nuclear installations or with the physical security of nuclear material. In both of these areas the States have the primary responsibility, although the IAEA as a statutory role in these matters, for example, in developing safety standards, providing technical assistance and services and arranging for the sharing of technology. There are, in addition, several complementary regional and bilateral nuclear inspection arrangements, in particular those in the European Union performed by the EURATOM inspectorate of the European Commission, those between Brazil and Argentina carried out by their Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Material (ABACC) and various bilateral agreements concerning safeguards and co-operation between States. Before the NPT, safeguards were applied in States only to specific material and equipment in a manner described in IAEA Document, INFCIRC/66/Rev.2. Most agreements of that type were concluded because States would only supply nuclear material or equipment if it triggered IAEA safeguards in the receiving States. However such receiving States have no legal obligation to make known all their nuclear activities. In the intervening years, most - but not all - non-nuclear weapon countries have signed the NPT and now have comprehensive safeguards flowing from their non-proliferation obligations. Since the early 1990s, and especially since the Gulf War and the consequent revelations of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons programme, the IAEA and its Member States have been working to introduce a new, more rigorous inspection and verification system. An Additional Model Protocol to supplement current safeguards was approved by IAEA's Governing Board in mid-1997. The supplementary measures are designed to more quickly and effectively alert the international community to the possible production or diversion of nuclear materials for military purposes. *IAEA takes account of all "special fissionable material" in any country under safeguards. This includes plutonium-239, uranium-233, uranium enriched in the isotopes 235 or 233 and any material containing one or more of the foregoing.