BELGRADE, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Monetary policy easing at a time of global financial crisis would hurt the stability of the Serbian financial system, central bank Governor Radovan Jelasic told parliament on Thursday.

"The easing of the restrictive monetary policy would affect stability of the financial system," Jelasic said. "We have to wait to see how long the global financial crisis will last and the depth of the crisis."

He addressed the finance committee as part of a campaign to reassure the public that the global turmoil would cripple neither the dinar currency nor local banks after three days of intervention in the market to slow dinar losses.

The dinar currency has lost more than 4 percent in a week, and the stock market around 30 percent.

Bankers have said there had been increasing evidence of clients wanting to withdraw savings and the opposition has demanded more information about how Serbia could be affected by the global financial crisis.

"Serbia's financial sector is highly solvent and liquid, mortgage lending accounts for only 6 percent of banks' total assets which means that a crisis resembling that in the United States is impossible," Jelasic said.

Banks in Serbia, with assets of almost 25 billion euros ($34.31 billion), are 75 percent owned by European Union banks.

However, they operate as separate entities under tough local laws, with average capital adequacy ratio at 28 percent compared with 12 percent required by the Serbian law.

Jelasic said it was too soon to assess the damage that would be inflicted on Serbian companies by the rising cost of cross-border borrowing -- for two years used by local enterprises as a way to avoid an even higher cost at home.

But it will take tighter fiscal policy and an improved credit rating for the central bank to cut its benchmark interest rate of 15.75 percent -- the highest among the countries in the region.

Slobodan Ilic, assistant to the finance minister, said tight monetary policy was protecting Serbia.

"High interest rates and reserve requirements now cushion the impact of the global crisis," he told the committee.

Chairman of the Securities Commission Milko Stimac told deputies the watchdog would not agree to closing down the stock market.

"We will never agree to closing the market down. But it seems that the panic in the Belgrade bourse is over with the main index positive again."
(Reporting by Gordana Filipovic; Editing by David Stamp, Swaha Pattanaik)