It will be interesting to see how this one pans out: President Bill Clinton is batting ruthlessly for America and has written to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia urging him to consider seriously granting a $4,000m contract for 500,000 new digital exchange lines to an American company: L M Ericsson Telefon AB and NEC Corp are said to have jointly put in the lowest bid of $1,670m; other contenders include Northern Telecom Ltd and AT&T Corp.