Can't input accented characters

[luc-midcomm BrazilianTranslation net]

After a long time using Midnight Commander, I realized it also has a very nice editor called mcedit or 
cooledit. I really liked it. But I use a lor of accented characters, like the ones so common in Spanish and 
French, and they do not work. Whenever I try to type one of them, nothing happens or something strange 
happens. For example:

- when I type the cedilla (ç), nothing happens;

- to type à, I usually press ` then a. But nothing happens;

- to type ã, I usually press ~ then a. But when I press a, the menu is activated, as if I had pressed F9;

- to type õ, I usually press ~ then o. But when I press o, I get "Paste the output of external command";

- to type ô, I usually press ^ then o. But when I press o, I get the "Sort block" command;

Most of the time, I use Konsole. But exactly the same happens with other terminals.

With files already written and saved with other editors, I can see these accented characters perfectly well.

In a pure command line, out of MC, I can type accented characters without any problem. Even in a pure console 
(no X);

When I use MC's file manager, I can see these accented characters in the names of files perfectly well 
(although not in other consoles).

So, the only thing that is not working here is input of accented characters in MC's editor. Does anyone know 
how I can fix it?

Thank you. 

-- 
Luciano Espirito Santo 
Santos, SP - Brasil