Washington, May 6 : After President George W Bush’s remarks linking Indians’ food habits to rising prices of commodities globally, the US is now blaming India and China for the surge in oil prices to record levels.

The White House also sought to calm the frayed nerves in India over Bush’s remarks that the rising prosperity of its large middle class is contributing to rising foods prices around the world, saying the US saw “higher living standards” of people there as a “good thing”. “Many developing nations like India or China are having greatly increased demand, which obviously is having an impact on price,” White House deputy spokesman Scott Stanzel said at a briefing while responding to a question on the crude oil price crossing US $ 120-mark.

“There are a lot of different ways that we can reduce our dependence, but we have more to do and it’s just — and also I would point out that, obviously, the demand for oil is growing around the world,” he said.

Asked to clarify Bush’s remarks on food habits of Indians, Stanzel said: “We think that it is a good thing that countries are developing; that more and more people have higher and higher standards of living.” However, he apparently did not go back on Bush’s point that Indian food habits were contributing to spiraling food prices, which in turn, was worsening the global food crisis.

“The point that I think was to be made is that as you increase your standard of living, the food that you eat can venture more into meats that require more commodities to feed the livestock which, you know, uses more of those commodities, whether it’s corn, or wheat, or other commodities and it drives up the price. So that is just a function of how those food prices that we’ve seen spike around the world.”

Defence Minister A K Antony had dubbed Bush’s remarks as a “cruel joke” while all the major political parties reacted angrily to it. Three days back, Bush specifically took the case of Indian middle class to argue that its demand for better nutrition was a factor in pushing the global food prices up.