The government will not dispatch a top-of-the-line Aegis destroyer to the Indian Ocean to back the anticipated military retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, official sources revealed late Thursday. The government had been considering sending the 7,250-ton Kongo on an intelligence-gathering mission, but caution from within the Liberal Democratic Party has forced the plan to be put on hold, the sources said.

A future dispatch of the destroyer, the sources said, has not been ruled out, but the government is now considering putting another escort ship in its place.

The Aegis system, controversial in Japan before it was even procured from the U.S., provides a state-of-the-art air-defense network.