Index: maven-project/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/project/DefaultMavenProjectBuilder.java
===================================================================
--- maven-project/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/project/DefaultMavenProjectBuilder.java	(revision 556370)
+++ maven-project/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/project/DefaultMavenProjectBuilder.java	(working copy)
@@ -78,16 +78,14 @@
 import org.codehaus.plexus.personality.plexus.lifecycle.phase.Initializable;
 import org.codehaus.plexus.util.IOUtil;
 import org.codehaus.plexus.util.StringUtils;
+import org.codehaus.plexus.util.ReaderFactory;
 import org.codehaus.plexus.util.xml.pull.XmlPullParserException;
 
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
-import java.io.FileReader;
 import java.io.IOException;
-import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 import java.io.Reader;
 import java.io.StringReader;
-import java.io.StringWriter;
 import java.net.URL;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Collections;
@@ -136,8 +134,7 @@
 */
 
 /**
- * @version $Id: DefaultMavenProjectBuilder.java,v 1.37 2005/03/08 01:55:22
- *          trygvis Exp $
+ * @version $Id$
  */
 public class DefaultMavenProjectBuilder
     extends AbstractLogEnabled
@@ -634,7 +631,7 @@
 
         Model model = new Model();
 
-        model.setModelVersion( "4.0.0" );
+        model.setModelVersion( MAVEN_MODEL_VERSION );
 
         model.setArtifactId( projectArtifact.getArtifactId() );
 
@@ -1123,7 +1120,7 @@
         Reader reader = null;
         try
         {
-            reader = new FileReader( file );
+            reader = ReaderFactory.newXmlReader( file );
             return readModel( projectId, file.getAbsolutePath(), reader, strict );
         }
         catch ( FileNotFoundException e )
@@ -1145,15 +1142,11 @@
     private Model readModel( String projectId, String pomLocation, Reader reader, boolean strict )
         throws IOException, InvalidProjectModelException
     {
-        StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
+        String modelSource = IOUtil.toString( reader );
 
-        IOUtil.copy( reader, sw );
-
-        String modelSource = sw.toString();
-
-        if ( modelSource.indexOf( "<modelVersion>4.0.0" ) < 0 )
+        if ( modelSource.indexOf( "<modelVersion>" + MAVEN_MODEL_VERSION ) < 0 )
         {
-            throw new InvalidProjectModelException( projectId, pomLocation, "Not a v4.0.0 POM." );
+            throw new InvalidProjectModelException( projectId, pomLocation, "Not a v" + MAVEN_MODEL_VERSION  + " POM." );
         }
 
         StringReader sReader = new StringReader( modelSource );
@@ -1172,10 +1165,10 @@
     private Model readModel( String projectId, URL url, boolean strict )
         throws ProjectBuildingException
     {
-        InputStreamReader reader = null;
+        Reader reader = null;
         try
         {
-            reader = new InputStreamReader( url.openStream() );
+            reader = ReaderFactory.newXmlReader( url.openStream() );
             return readModel( projectId, url.toExternalForm(), reader, strict );
         }
         catch ( IOException e )