Zend_View->escape charset problem

I look a bit through Zend_View->escape method and don't see any way to
pass the wanted escape charset.

I think a new funciton can be created smth. like

function htmlspecialchars_Utf8(string) {
 return htmlspecialchars($string,ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8');
}

$view->setEscape('htmlentities_Utf8');

This is supposed to be the solution ?