At 03:32 PM 2/24/99 , John Charles Broomfield wrote:

>Hi all,
>        A little while back a few questions were raised on who/why some
>ccTLDs had come into existance.
>My question to the ISO-3166 maintenance agency:


As someone who was responsible for coordinating this
across rue Varemb� in Geneva (a very short block with
ISO hq is on one side, ITU on the other), let me add that
ISO is a non-governmental standards organization whose
symbol specifications are supposed to represent places
for information systems processing purposes with no
attendant implications.  This is contrasted with ITU symbols
that may be the subject to UN resolutions and treaty
instruments.  Even at the ITU,  however, pragmatic solutions
are usually sought with an attendant caveat about no
implications.  In addition, DNS TLD symbols didn't always
religiously follow the ISO standard.

During the period that most of those symbols were added
at ISO, the decisions were made out of the ISO Director
General's office in Geneva.

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