What is the best way to remove accents (normalize) in a Python unicode string?

I have a Unicode string in Python, and I would like to remove all the accents (diacritics). I found on the web an elegant way to do this (in Java): convert the Unicode string to its long normalized form (with a separate character for letters and diacritics) remove all the characters whose Unicode type is "diacritic". Do I need to install a library such as pyICU or is this possible with just the Py