I do feel somewhat obliged to mention that the third word of the hidden message should be "peace", not "piece" (unless, of course, that’s an intentional joke I wasn’t quite getting!).
For the sake of my quizzes and word search puzzles, whatever JetPunk recognizes as a country is what I call a country, and whatever JetPunk does not recognize as a country I do not call a country. While it can be disputed whether or not Scotland should hold the title of "country", it is not a country for this puzzle's sake.