Nobody said the EITI support was forced. The point was about timing, motive and who actually benefits, and on those three counts the record speaks for itself. On timing: Britain closed its High Commissions in Tonga, Vanuatu and Kiribati in 2005 and stepped back from the Pacific for the better part of fifteen years. It announced the "Pacific Uplift" and reopened those posts in 2019, the same year H

Majority view

Authoritative UK sources confirm that Britain had closed its High Commissions in Tonga and Vanuatu and announced their reopening in 2019 under the Pacific Uplift strategy. The record is more nuanced for Kiribati: available evidence places the closure in the 2004–2006 period, and the 2019 reopening initiative concerned Tonga, Vanuatu, and Samoa, not Kiribati. Thus, the claim is partially contradicted by the documented dates and by its inclusion of Kiribati in the 2019 reopening claim.