Clive, Actually the numbers stay the same, Russia retains the number for the Soviet Union and united Germany retained the number for West-Germany. The perspective here is that of a jurisdictional nature. Even though the physical territory may change, the jurisdictional entity remains. East-Germany stopped being a member of the UN. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia continued with the same numeric code, others codes were added when parts of the SU became UN recognized member states ( goes via the Security Council). The same happened re Ethiopia (& Eritrea), Yugoslavia, etc. The 3 digit numeric code and the 3-alpha code belong to are under the control of the UN and maintained by the UN Statistical system. The the official long and short names of each country are under the control of each country. However changes in names or names for "new" countries are vetted by the UN. Normally proposed changes do go through "automatically". Only rarely does a UN member object (e.g. as is the current case with "Macedonia). The ISO 3166-1 standard takes this UN originated information and then adds/manages the 2-alpha codes. trust that this is of some help - Jake Knoppers -----Original Message----- From: Clive D.W. Feather [mailto:clive@demon.net] Sent: June 11, 2004 7:43 AM To: Infoman Cc: Mark Davis; Guy Harris; tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Time Zone Localizations Infoman said:
IN ISO 3166-1, in the 3-digit numeric codes, the 900+-999 range is available for private use. Some of these are already "taken", i.e. in widespread use. I note that banking and financial services (ISO TC68) standardards for financial transactions do use the 3-digit numeric code because it is the most stable.
The numeric codes serve a different purpose to the alphabetic ones - they identify physical territory. So when a country changes name and therefore alpha code, the number stays the same. But when the territory changes (e.g. absorption of East by West Germany) the number changes even if the alpha code stays the same. -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 Thus plc | |