ASUNCION, Oct 26: Paraguay’s national team have turned down an offer to travel in the presidential jet after outspoken goalkeeper Jose Luis Chilavert said the players were being used as guinea pigs to test the ageing aircraft.

The government offered the team the use of the Boeing 707, which has been grounded since president Luis Gonzalez Macchi took office in March 1999, to fly to next month’s World Cup qualifier in Venezuela on November 7.

But the suggestion brought an angry reaction from goalkeeper and captain Chilavert.

“It’s completely unacceptable for them to send us in a plane which not even the president uses,” the volatile Chilavert told local media. “We are not guinea pigs for them to try out the plane with.”

The plane was at the centre of a scandal in 1996 when then president Juan Carlos Wasmosy ordered that it be fitted with a luxurious new interior at a cost of $5 million.—Reuters