my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
open my $in, '<:encoding(UTF-16)', $xmlfile or die $!;
my $xmltext = do { local $/;  <$in> };
close $in;
$xmltext =~ s/encoding="Unicode"//i;
my $doc = $parser->parse_string($xmltext) or die "Could not process XML file $xmlfile";