1) on a basic service NO Separation(deconfliction) is provided what flight rules you are under are not taken into account.
2) The only reason was possibly the controller felt he had A Duty of Care not to point two ifr a/c at each other so did slightly more than is actually required of him.
3) by this I think you mean "cleared for the VoR procedure" etc. personally i would use no known traffic for this rather than cleared for.
ross