Parse XML file encoded in ISO-8859-1

Dear Friends,

I have an XML file that's encoded in ISO-8859-1. I have some European characters coming in from 2 fields (Name, Comments) in the XML file. Can anyone suggest if there are any functions in Unix to read those characters? Using shell programming, can I parse this xml file?

Please suggest. I have not done this before.

Regards,
Madhavi.