The ISO 3166 code CS

[John Clews]

I'd be interested in views about ISO 3166 maintenance,
and the unprecedented reuse by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
of previous codes.

No proposal to reuse codes was made at the ISO/TC46/WG2 (Country
Codes) meeting in Rome, when it met earlier in 2003.

The nature of the problem is as follows:

CS was previously Czechoslovakia in ISO 3166, and CS was added to
ISO 3166-3 (superseded codes) when the Czech Republic and Slovakia
were allocated CZ and SK instead of CS.

Much to my surprise, Serbia and Montenegro requested the use of this
for Serbia and Montenegro while they still use the code YU, and there
is no indication that YU is deprecated, or that it will be added to
ISO 3166-3.

More to my surprise, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (maintained
within ISO HQ itself, in Switzerland) granted this request, and
apparently did not refer to ISO 3166-3 (superseded codes).

1. What implications are there for the consistent use of YU, CS,
   CZ and SK in relation to RFC 3066 and other codes which also use
   ISO 3166 normatively?

2. Is there any actions or representations that should be undertaken?

I look forward to comments.

Best wishes

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Tel:    +44 1423 888 432
mobile: +44 7766 711 395
Email:  scripts2 at sesame.demon.co.uk
Web:    http://www.keytempo.com