Returning non-ASCII strings with PHP XML-RPC

Is there any way to return a non-ASCII string using the library?

I have to return the string "îÏ×ÏÓÔÉ XML É ÒÅÓÕÒÓÙ ÄÌÑ ÒÁÚÒÁÂÏÔÞÉËÏ×"
(its user data and I have no control over it). The client side (built
with the same library) throws an error when it sees this string
in the XML.

I tried pre-processing the value with PHP's utf8_encode function;
this did not affect the results.

Any ideas, or is this a fundamental limitation of XML-RPC?

Jeff;

Jeff Barr - Vertex Development - [email protected]
  IM:      MSN: [email protected]; AIM: jeffscottbarr
  Resume:       www.vertexdev.com/~jeff/resume.html
  Good Stuff:   www.syndic8.com   www.headlineviewer.com