HTML entity Unicode Hex Character

Hello!

I receive permanently a XML document wich contain strings like this:

"Iași"
"Galați"
"Rīgas pilsēta"

What can I do to convert automatically from VB strings like this to ASCII code or something like this, eg:

"Iași" = "Iasi"
"Galați" = "Galati"
"Rīgas pilsēta" = "Rigas pilseta"


Thanks for any help.