  We introduce a new mechanism for producing locally stable de-Sitter or
Minkowski vacua, with spontaneously broken N=1 supersymmetry and no massless
scalars, applicable to superstring and M-theory compactifications with fluxes.
We illustrate the mechanism with a simple N=1 supergravity model that provides
parametric control on the sign and the size of the vacuum energy. The crucial
ingredient is a gauged U(1) that involves both an axionic shift and an
R-symmetry, and severely constrains the F- and D-term contributions to the
potential.
