[urn] Are ISO 3166 country codes stable enough for URN use?

[Sean Leonard <[e-mail]>]

In reviewing the latest draft-ietf-urnbis-ns-reg-transition, I noticed 
the dependency on NBN [RFC3188], which in turn depends on ISO 3166.

An example is <URN:NBN:fi-fe19981001>.

URNs are supposed to be stable and durable over time...

but are ISO 3166 country codes stable enough for URN?

I have not actually read all of the details of ISO 3166. But ISO 3166 
grapples with an intensely political question: how to name countries. I 
read this PDF:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/tradekb/Attachment194.aspx

And it says that "withdrawn [codes] may not be reused for five years". 
That means that they can be reused in five years. I think that violates 
some URN principles.

NBN isn't the first time we have seen ISO 3166 country codes in URNs. 
There is the urn:lex proposal (not really sure where that is now).

There are also my proposals for urn:xmlns and urn:rdf. However in my 
proposals, the entire NSS is assigned on a first-come, first-served 
basis: the relationship between two- and three-character ISO 3166 
country codes being part of the NSS is purely a coincidence and 
therefore reassignment of a country code does not affect the durability 
and immutability of the assigned string.

Sean