weird characters in the url

[eluser]osci[/eluser]
I'm from Greece too and I also send in url greek words. in ie for my news i have
/news/1/Νέο-1

in application/config/config.php i have

Code:

$config['permitted_uri_chars'] = 'a-z 0-9~%.:_\-'.
   'αάβγδεέξηήθιίϊκλμνξοόπρσςτυύϋφχψωώ'.
   'ΑΆΒΓΔΕΈΖΗΉΘΙΊΪΚΛΜΝΞΟΌΠΡΣΤΥΎΫΦΧΨΩΏ';

and to produce them I have in a helper

Code:

function string_for_uri($str)
{
    $str = str_replace(array('"', "'","!","?","@","#","$","%","^","*",";","`","~",), '', $str);
    $str = str_replace(array("/", ",","."," ","<",">","(",")","[","]","{","}","&","-","="), '-', $str);
    return $str;
}

removing unwanted characters.

Edit:
This way I can have urls containing greek like
http://www.netid.gr/news/page/1/Στατικές...ες-Όχι-πια