First picture of Sanford’s mistress Maria revealed

The first image of the woman believed to be the mistress of the disgraced Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, has emerged - but sadly for those keen to see the "erotic beauty" the Republican politician described in his emails, it is grainy video footage.

Sanford famously disappeared from the Governor's mansion last month, telling his staff that he was hiking the Appalachian trail, but actually taking a flight to Buenos Aires to be with his mistress.

The identity of the woman named only as 'Maria' by Sanford has gripped both the United States and Argentina - drawing more Google searches than Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett the morning after they died.

In the video footage, Maria Belen Chapur is shown reporting for the Spanish language news channel Canal America from New York shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. A 43-year-old divorced mother-of-two, she worked as a journalist and translator of English for the Argentine TV channel for about a year, according to a TV producer and former colleague, Gabriel Bartos.

Sanford admitted in his tearful confession last Wednesday that the pair first met at an "open air dance spot" in the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este eight years ago. Last June their "remarkable friendship" had "sparked into something more than that," he confessed.

Belen Chapur broke her silence on Sunday, confirming the relationship with Sanford without mentioning him by name or calling it an "affair". She said from Buenos Aires: "I have decided to send to you this release that will be the only one, to thus clarify certain incorrect things that are being spread worldwide so as to give an end to the subject that as you can imagine is of great pain to me, as for my two children, my family and close friends."

She also claimed that emails sent anonymously to the State newspaper had been taken from her Hotmail account without her permission. In one of them, Sanford praised her "particular grace and calm" and added: "I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light."

Despite pressure from some quarters, Sanford has not stood down as Governor. Nor has his wife taken him home.