UN General Assembly
1994

Underlying all the efforts by the international community over the past 25 years to stem the spread of nuclear weapons has been the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The NPT remains the cornerstone of international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. Its success is reflected in this phenomenon: the general expectation in the 1960s was that the world would have as many as 25 nuclear-weapon States by the 1980s, but instead, 160 countries have now acceded to the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon States, leaving only a handful outside the Treaty framework. The peaceful-use assurances derived from the Treaty and from the safeguards regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency have laid the foundation for very valuable international cooperation in fields such as nuclear power generation, nuclear medicine and agricultural and scientific applications of nuclear energy. In addition, the NPT incorporates the only commitment from the five nuclear-weapon States to complete nuclear disarmament. The cause of complete nuclear disarmament, which