Bangkok - Embattled Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on Monday denied charges that he had broken the constitution by hosting a television cooking show while holding the premiership, claiming the programme had been done on a freelance basis.

In May, a group of Thai senators charged Samak with violating the constitution by continuing his job as a TV presenter on his personal cooking show, Chim pai, bon pai 
(Tasting and Complaining), after he had been appointed prime minister on February 6.

Samak, who is under pressure to resign and perhaps go back to his cooking shows, appeared before the Constitution Court Monday to refute the charges.

"I consulted with legal counsel after I became prime minister, and they all agreed it was not a breach of the constitution if I was not a regular employee of a company," Samak told the court.

He said he had only hosted the show a few times after becoming prime minister and only on a freelance basis.

"I did it because I liked doing it," Samak said. "I was the first TV presenter to do my cooking right in the market, and it was delicious too."

Under Thailand's 2007 constitution, no elected politician is allowed to hold a second job while in office. The clause was designed to avoid conflicts of interest.

Samak, 73, a veteran politician with more than four decades of experience in Thailand's tempestuous politics, is also an accomplished cook.

His court appearance came at a time when his political credibility is already at a nadir.

Protestors from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) movement seized Government House on August 26 and have refused to leave the government's administrative centre until Samak resigns.

On September 2, Samak declared Bangkok under a state of emergency after pro-government and PAD followers clashed in a pre-dawn street battle, leaving one person dead and 43 injured.

Despite the emergency decree, which outlaws any gathering of more than five people, the Thai military has refused to intervene to remove the thousands of PAD protestors at Government House, raising serious questions about Samak's ability to control the military and police.

The army's commander-in-chief, General Anupong Paojinda, who heads the committee set up to enforce the emergency decree, said September 2 that using force was not an option. He also used the opportunity to say a coup was out of the question.

But the ongoing political crisis has fueled rumours that the military would eventually intervene to restore order.

"If the problems cannot be resolved by democratic means and the country is caught on a deadlock, a coup may be necessary," General Somjet Boonthanom, a chief adviser to the defence permanent secretary, told the Bangkok Post newspaper.

Thailand's last military coup was staged on September 19, 2006, under remarkably similar circumstances.

The army stepped in to overthrow then-premier Thaksin Shinawatra after months of street protests against his rule led by the PAD, a loose coalition of vehemently anti-Thaksin forces that came to represent the outrage of Bangkok's middle class and political elite against self-serving, populist politicians.

Thaksin was ousted while attending the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. On Sunday, Samak told his Talking Samak Style TV show, which comes with the premiership, that he plans to attend the UN annual meeting later this month to explain Thailand's political situation to the international community. dpa