Csproj files are just XML files. For this, you can use XDocument from the .NET platform. I did this for VS2010, but in VS2008 the tags are almost the same.
Example for VS2010, you should check the tags and namespace:
XElement projectNode = XElement.Load(fileName);
XNamespace ns = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003";
var referenceNodes = projectNode.Descendants(ns + "ItemGroup").Descendants(ns + "Reference")
You can also check the ProjectReference tag. Hope this helps.
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