Haskell and F#: Language Design

After watching a taste of Haskell by Simon Peyton-Jones and having a look at A History of Haskell: being lazy with class, I am left with some open questions regarding the design of F#:

• Why is F# not lazy?: What is the advantage of eagerness?

• Is there a point in encapsulating side-effectful operations in monads while programming in F#? IO Monads etc.?

  #light
  
  // Sample F# IO Monad : OSCON Haskell Video Part 2
  
  type IO<'a> = IO of 'a
  
  //  get: unit -> IO<string>
  let get () = IO(read_line    ())
  
  //  put: string -> IO<unit>
  let put x  = IO(print_string x)
  
  //     bind.e: IO<'a>  ->  'a
  // bind: IO<'a> -> ('a -> IO<'b>) -> IO<'b>
  let bind (x:IO<'a>) (y:('a -> IO<'b>)) = let e (IO(a)) = a in y (e x)
  let (>>=) = bind
  
  //  gp: unit -> IO<unit>
  let gp () = get () >>= put
  
  gp ()

• Why did the F# team chose ML and OCaml over Haskell?

I hope someone from the F# team enlightens me on all these. I am still scrutinizing the 55-pages-long history of Haskell to create a list of questions I want to ask.