London, Aug 2 : British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to do his best to stop Libya from becoming another Iraq, after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi ordered his leftover loyalists to turn the country into `hell'.

Cameron slammed the `cynics and armchair generals' who criticised intervention, and said that helping deliver democracy in the Middle East was in Britain's long-term interests.

Speaking in Paris after a major summit on Libya, he said he now wanted to see the West take a tougher line on Syria, and added: "We will all lose if the Arab Spring turns into a winter of oppression," the Daily Mail reports.

Insisting that he is `optimistic' about Libya's future, Cameron said that Libya now has a chance of attaining a level of democracy, freedom, a level of progress.

However, he insisted that Britain had learned the lessons of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's disastrous intervention in Iraq, when British troops were caught for years in the crossfire of the sectarian violence that followed the end of Saddam Hussein's regime, the paper said.

He insisted that the transition to another form of government would be `Libyan-led' and not involve thousands of Western ground troops.

"We have learnt the lessons from Iraq and past conflict; there have not been occupying armies, there have not been great big invading forces. This has been a Libyan-led process, assisted by the international community," Cameron said.

"I'm an optimist about Libya. This is not being dropped out of a NATO aeroplane, this is being delivered by the Libyan people," he added.

Camron's comments came after Gaddafi broadcast a defiant message on Syrian TV, vowing that his remaining forces would fight "in every street, every village and every city". He urged his followers to turn the country into a `hell'. (ANI)