* Members of parliament expected to back UK role
* Concern over where Libyan operation will lead (Updates with vote, Hague comment on funding of mission)
By Adrian Croft
LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron tried to reassure a war-weary public on Monday that Britain's military involvement in Libya will not drag it into another Iraq-style conflict.
After a six-hour debate, the British parliament voted overwhelmingly to support Cameron's decision to send British planes and ships to help enforce a no-fly zone to stop attacks on civilians by the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The vote was 557-13, although some lawmakers voiced fears of getting dragged deeper into the Libyan conflict and others questioned why Britain had chosen to intervene in Libya but not in other crisis-hit countries.
Hanging heavy over the debate was the shadow of Iraq, where 179 British soldiers were killed in a long-running conflict after former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair backed then U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to invade in March 2003.
"This is different to Iraq. This is not going into a country, knocking over its government and then owning and being responsible for everything that happens subsequently," Cameron said.
"This is about protecting people and giving the Libyan people a chance to shape their own destiny," he said.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the Libya operation would be funded from a Treasury reserve and not from the defence budget, which faces a real-terms cut of 8 percent over the next four years as part of efforts to curb a big budget deficit.
ECHOES OF IRAQ DEBATE
In a debate almost exactly eight years ago, the British parliament gave Blair a green light to wage war on Iraq despite a massive revolt within his own party.
The 10-month-old Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has stressed that the Libya situation is very different from the Iraq war, which clouded Blair's premiership.
Unlike the Iraq invasion, the Libya no-fly zone has been authorised by the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council resolution expressly bars occupation.
Labour leader Ed Miliband supported Cameron, saying: "We have seen with our own eyes what the Libyan regime is capable of. We've seen guns being turned on unarmed demonstrators."
But some lawmakers, particularly left-wing Labour members, voiced doubts about what Britain was getting into.
"I'm far from convinced that the public are behind this," Labour legislator Jeremy Corbyn said.
"They are very concerned about where it leads to because they've been through the miserable experience of Iraq and they have deep concerns additionally about Afghanistan," he said.
Britain has 10,000 troops fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
"We shouldn't be in there, we've got enough on our plate in Afghanistan," said Neil Wozencroft, a 35-year-old pipe fitter, told Reuters when asked about the Libya campaign.
"It's a civil war and we shouldn't get involved, plus there are other atrocities in the world -- the Congo and Zimbabwe. We can't be the world's peacekeepers."
Conservative lawmaker Edward Leigh called for a rethink of last year's British defence review which he said had been a "disaster". The review has paved the way for sharp cuts in armed forces' equipment and personnel.
Cameron said there was no action without risk. "But ... we have to weigh the risks of inaction ... the consequences for Europe of a failed pariah state on its southern border. All of these, in my view, are simply too great to ignore," he said. (Additional reporting by Matt Falloon, Tim Castle and Avril Ormsby; Editing by Alison Williams)
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