
Hi.

The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a
country, nor what code letters are appropriate for a particular
country.

The codes we use are those from the ISO 3166-1 standard.

A country must be recognised as such by the ISO; the code used must be
the ISO-3166 code.

Please see the following URL:

http://www.ftp.uni-erlangen.de/cgi-bin/view/pub/doc/ISO/english/ISO-3166-background

(In a few exceptional cases, a code has been used which is reserved
with the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency at the request of the UPU).

Thanks.

IANA