PRISTINA: Five Western democracies on Sunday called Pristina to suspend enforcement of a regulation which effectively bans the use of the Serbian dinar as a cash currency in Kosovo, the US embassy said.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after ethnic Albanian rebels battled Serb troops in a war that cost 13,000 lives, mainly Kosovar Albanians.

Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo is still home to about 120,000 Serbs, who are largely loyal to Belgrade.

They are concentrated in the northern region around the divided city of Mitrovica, but also in a dozen predominantly Serb enclaves where Pristina has sometimes struggled to exercise authority. In these areas, locals prefer the Serbian dinar even though Kosovo uses the euro.