The European Central Bank is pushing global banking regulators to relax a draft liquidity rule so that lenders can use some asset-backed securities and loans to businesses in a buffer they must hold against a possible credit squeeze, according to three people familiar with the talks.

The ECB, backed by the Bank of France, considers a draft version of the liquidity coverage ratio, or LCR, may hamper efforts to combat the euro-area debt crisis by curtailing lending and making it harder for central banks to implement their monetary policies, said the people, who couldn't be identified because the discussions at the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision are private. They said the ECB stance is opposed by some other Basel members, including U.S. regulators.

The LCR was drawn up by the Basel group as part of a package of measures to prevent a repeat of the turmoil that followed the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ECB is seeking to relax the rule — designed to force banks to hold enough easy-to-sell assets to survive a 30-day credit squeeze — by expanding the range of eligible securities, aligning the standard more closely with its own collateral arrangements, the people said.