How can I make unicode symbols and truetype fonts work in xterm/uxterm?

I'd like to use a truetype font in xterm/uxterm (version 278) but I get problems with unicode symbols (é for example displays fine, so I guess it's not a disabled utf8 or a locale issue): $ echo -e "\xE2\x98\xA0" gives me a square instead of ☠ with following config: UXTerm*faceName: Liberation Mono UXTerm*faceSize: 9 XTerm*faceName: Liberation Mono XTerm*faceSize: 9 When I disable truetype fonts using the ctrl right click menu, the symbol displays fine using the default fonts which isn't nice at all. I tried uxrvt and got the same problem when I don't have enough letter spacing, but it works fine when I increase it. However, uxrvt gave me a lot of other problems, just like all the other terminal emulators I tried. Does anybody have an idea?