Edwards ex-mistress refuses to undergo paternity test (Lead:)

Washington, Aug.10 : The John Edwards extra-marital affair appears to be getting complicated with each passing day.

The latest is that the former Democrat vice-presidential candidate's ex-mistress, Rielle Hunter, has refused to undergo a paternity test to establish whether she and Edwards were the biological parents of her daughter.

Forty-four-year-old Hunter's lawyer, Robert Gordon, said that his client is not running for public office, and therefore, wishes to maintain her and her daughter's privacy.

Gordon said in a statement. ''Furthermore, Rielle will not participate in DNA testing or any other invasion of her or her daughter's privacy now or in the future.''

On Friday, Edwards, 55, had admitted to having a nine-month-long affair with Hunter in 2006, but denied that he was the father of Hunter's 5-month-old daughter. He offered to take a paternity test to prove he is not the father of Frances Quinn Hunter, who was born in California on February 27 this year.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, confessed to ABC News that he had lied repeatedly about the affair with Hunter, then 42, who produced videos for Edwards as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign.

In an interview which aired on ABC's ''Nightline'' on Friday night, Edwards said he would be willing to take a paternity test to put the issue to rest but wasn't sure whether Hunter would be willing to.

The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, in the run-up to the Democratic primaries.

It said that its reporters had seen Edwards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles where he had met with Hunter after her child's birth. Edwards then called it ''tabloid trash,'' but with the Democratic Convention expected to take place on August 26, and Edwards being seen as one of its prominent credible speakers, party bigwigs have said they will prevent him from appearing on the podium to endorse Barack Obama as the presidential nominee if he does not come clean on the issue.

Edwards wife Elizabeth who is suffering from terminal cancer, also does not belief her husband is the father of Hunter's child. She described her husband as courageous for coming clean on the affair after months of denial.

She described the affair as a private matter that needed to be dealt with privately.

ANI