Spring web service

HI

I need to call to the follwoing url from my spring web flow event and get the response

http://<HostNAME>/echo?message=Hello+World&_username=<username>&_api _key=<apikey>

if I do this on the browser it works fine
but if I execute using this HtttpClient it does not work
(I tried URL connection also it does not work connection time out ,but browser it works fine)

is there any way to execute from spring web flow event and get the response

response is look like this if i execute this using web browser

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<response>
<time>2012-11-28T04:12:56+00:00</time>
<message>Hello World</message>
</response>

I need to get this response from executing withing the event

I am using
Spring web flow 1.06
spring mvc 2.5

Thanks
Saneera