LDAP and special chars

Hello, I am working with PHP 4.0.6 and OpenLDAP 2.0.11. I encounter problems when modifying some entries with attributes containing special chars (such as å, ø...). The error returned by the LDAP server is "invalid syntax". I have read some documentation about this. OpenLDAP can accept base64-encoded values, provided we use the tools that come with the application (ldapadd, ldapmodify, etc.). Then the attributes in the entry would be separated from their values by a double column instead of the single colums used normally. i.e, the entry would be dn:uid=whatever,o=whatever normalAttribute: normalvalue specialAttribute:: SVN== (this one is B64 encoded) But how to do this from PHP functions? I tried to base64_encode the values, it naturally didn't do the trick (those values were considered as normal, and thus were not decoded). Any idea? Thanks in advance Christian Chateauvieux