Simple way to parse I18N dates?

Hi,

I am currently sort of stuck with implementing some functionality.

I know I can use a DateFormatter to define a formatted string from a given date, but I couldn't actually find something for the other way around.
The Java equivalent usually has a "parse" and a "format" method allowing to read a date from a string and to return a date and a format to serialize a date to a desired output format. It seems the Flex version is missing the parse part ... What do I have to use for this?

Chris