VILNIUS, Jul 22 (LETA--BNS) - Lithuania is looking for ways to help Latvia but doubts that sending the 100 border guards requested by its neighbour would resolve its crisis, Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas said on Wednesday.

"We are assessing the possibilities of where we can redeploy them (border guards - BNS) to provide assistance to Latvia, and we hope to find those opportunities," the minister told reporters on Wednesday.

Katelynas said that if Latvia truly needed 100 border guards, it could deploy its own military for peacetime tasks. He said that while Lithuania was ready to contribute what it could, its priority remained the security of its own borders and citizens.

In the first six months of this year, the flow of so-called secondary migration from Latvia increased from just over 300 to more than 1,200 foreigners compared with the same period last year.

During a visit by the Latvian president and his delegation to Lithuania last week, the interior ministers signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation in fighting crime, which is expected to help combat organised migrant smuggling networks.

According to the State Border Guard Service, more than 8,000 migrants have attempted to enter Latvia this year, either being detained and returned to Belarus or deterred by Latvian border guards while still on the Belarusian side. This is nearly nine times the number of attempts to enter Lithuania from Belarus.