Magento script problem with encoding

Question

I have problem with magento and encoding :( i've created php script which imports products into magento (by php api). Almost everything is fine.... BUT after import i don't have polish characters in product details ;( only some strange characters.... While import script is running i make var_dump on product name and evetything is fine (i have proper polish signs in script output). My local.xml contains:

<initStatements><![CDATA[SET NAMES utf8]]></initStatements>

Database setup is proper too, all database/tables has proper encoding (utf8). After manual product creation on Magento backend i have proper polish chars in product details.

I've checked script encoding and everything is ok (US-ASCII -- is -- a subset of UTF-8)

importProducts.php: text/x-php; charset=us-ascii

Any other ideas?

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EDIT:

Ok, I,ve solved the problem! The solution was append

<charset>utf8</charset>

to database configuration in local.xml,