New York: Osama bin Laden, the head of the al-Qaida network, may not have been behind the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with a leading US magazine.

"I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up there in the mountains could do it," Musharraf told 'The New Yorker' in an interview in the magazine's issue appearing on August 4.

"He was perhaps the sponsor, the financier, the motivating force. But those who executed it were much more modern," Musharraf said. "They knew the US, they knew aviation. I don't think he has the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else," he added.

Musharraf also defended his regime from the critics in the West who he says saw him as a dictator and an aberration to Democracy.

"They should have seen how I am governing. Is it dictatorial? Is it autocratic?" he asks.

The magazine noted that the Pakistani President has been given the new nickname "Busharraf" for his support of the United States in the war in Afghanistan.