On the metal abundance in the core of M 87

We revisit the XMM-Newton observation of M 87 to make a new and more detail ed measurement of the metal abundance profile. After having verified that s pectral fits with single temperature models show a dramatic abundance drop within 1 arcmin of the cluster core, we show that more appropriate models, which include a multi-temperature component to account for the strong tempe rature gradient observed in M 87, and a power-law component to account for the emission of the nucleus and knot A, give a substantially at abundance p rofile. The drastic abundance decrement found by fitting a single temperatu re component to the data is an artifact known as "Fe-bias" (Buote 2000a,b) following from the application of an oversimplified spectral model to the d ata.