ISLAMABAD -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday he believed alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan but might be dead already. He also said "hardly a dozen" us military communications experts were working on Pakistani territory with local forces to hunt down Bin Laden's fighters as they fled across the border. Musharraf said the Al-Qaeda extremists could never regroup in force in Pakistan, but small elements were capable of crossing the border and could destabilise the "security environment" in the country, AFP reported. "I think most probably he's in Afghanistan, either dead or alive," Musharraf said of Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader and alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks in the United States. He acknowledged the presence of U.S. forces in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt along the Afghan border but insisted they were not involved in any offensive action against terrorist suspects. "What we are sensitive to is action being taken by anyone other than our own troops," he said. "They do not even allow our own troops to enter ... this is the first time in the history of Pakistan that we have entered there," he said, referring to the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes along the border. Musharraf has run the risk of provoking a backlash from homegrown religious extremists since becoming a key partner in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. The Pashtuns also have close ethnic links to the Taleban militia, the Islamic movement which ruled Afghanistan for five years from 1996 and sheltered Bin Laden. Some radical Islamic parties have demanded the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Pakistan after the presence of small groups of U.S. troops became public last month. Uniformed U.S. soldiers have been seen assisting Pakistani forces in raids on suspected terrorist hideouts in the northwestern border region in recent weeks. Musharraf said the infiltration of small groups of Al-Qaeda fighters into Pakistan "May be affecting the security environment" in the country, amid concerns of terrorist attacks on Westerners here. But he said it was "impossible" for Al-Qaeda to take over a remote corner of Pakistan and use it to launch attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.