  The characterization of a six- (or seven)-dimensional internal manifold with
metric as having positive, zero or negative curvature is expected to be an
important aspect of warped compactifications in supergravity. In this context,
Douglas and Kallosh recently pointed out that a compact internal space with
negative curvature could help to construct four-dimensional de Sitter solutions
only if the extra dimensions are strongly warped or there are large stringy
corrections. That is, the problem of finding 4-dimensional de Sitter solutions
is well posed, if all extra dimensions are physically compact, which is called
a no-go theorem. Here, we show that the above conclusion does not extend to a
general class of warped compactifications in classical supergravity that allow
a non-compact direction or cosmological solutions for which the internal space
is asymptotic to a cone over a product of compact Einstein spaces or spheres.
For clarity, we present classical solutions that compactify higher-dimensional
spacetime to produce a Robertson--Walker universe with de Sitter-type expansion
plus one extra non-compact direction. Such models are found to admit both an
effective four-dimensional Newton constant that remains finite and a
normalizable zero-mode graviton wavefunction. We also exhibit the possibility
of obtaining 4D de Sitter solutions by including the effect of fluxes (p-form
field strengths).
