Decoding special characters with Request.QueryString.Item

Hey folks I'm having a problem and I'd like your help.  I'm trying to decode special characters in parameter values passed into a web page.  Here's my script:
<%Response.charset="UTF-8"%>
<%@ Page Explicit="true" %>
<script language="VB" runat="Server">
</script>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<%Response.Write("A ...