[Zope] POST from Zope to external server and receive RESPONSE

Hello folks, I'm sure this question has been answered before but bear with me - Zope isn't my forte and I couldn't see anything like the problem I'd like to solve on the Zope list. I've inherited a project that now needs to post an XML packet to an ecommerce gateway, ie a user submits, via a form, credit card details which are posted to a Zope server. The Zope server then builds an XML packet and wants to POST to an external server which will send a RESPONSE. Can I capture that RESPONSE in Zope or must I use external methods and something like Python's httplib. I've done similar things with curl lib and C++, php curl lib and php. Any hints folks? David