Setting character set at connection fails

The charset connection option is ignored

    db = mysql.connect(user='root',buffered=True,
        charset="latin7")
    cur = db.cursor()

    cur.execute("SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%%char%%'")
    print_rows(cur.fetchall())

outputs

(u'character_set_client', u'utf8')
(u'character_set_connection', u'utf8')
(u'character_set_database', u'utf8')
(u'character_set_filesystem', u'binary')
(u'character_set_results', u'utf8')
(u'character_set_server', u'utf8')
(u'character_set_system', u'utf8')
(u'character_sets_dir', u'/opt/mysql/mysql-5.1.41-osx10.5-x86_64/share/charsets/')

Should not use SET NAMES when connecting.