The "voluptuous" Ukrainian nurse who accompanies Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi is purely there for his medical needs, and the pair are not lovers, her daughter insisted to a local newspaper Tuesday, DPA reported.
In the tranche of WikiLeaks papers put on the web at the weekend, US Ambassador to Libya Gene A. Cretz said nurse Galyna Kolotnytska was one of Gaddafi's closest associates, and the only member of a four female nurse team who knew the Libyan leader's "routine."
Kolotnytska, 38, is an experienced health professional and recent reports she and Gaddafi may be lovers are "absolutely false," said her daughter Tatyana Kolotnytska, according to a Segodnya newspaper article.
The perviously secret US governmental message reported some contacts in Libya had informed US diplomats of a personal relationship existing between Kolotnyska and Gaddafi.
Tatyana Kolotnytska in an interview with Segodnya, Ukraine's largest daily newspaper, described her mother as an experienced medical professional who traveled to Libya in 2001 because of low wages at home.
Gaddafi is generally healthy but and requires round-the-clock presence in his entourage as a safety measure, according to the article.
Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya for 41 years, is also known to travel with an entourage of female bodyguards.
"He seems to trust women more for these jobs," Kolotnyska told the paper.
Kolotnyska when off duty lives in a four-room apartment in Tripoli, but is rarely at home because of Gaddafi's intense travel schedule, and his preference of living out of a tent several months a year, the younger Kolotnytska said.
She called ambassador Cretz's allegations her mother may actually be Gaddafi's mistress "shocking. .. and a nightmare."
Cretz sent the message from the US embassy in Tripoli after US officials had discussed Gaddafi's travel arrangements to New York in 2009. The cable as among 250,00 documents released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.