Are recipients required to resolve fragment identifiers?

I have a question about fragment identifiers.  Are implementations
allowed to perform a retrieval action for URIs without resolving
fragment identifiers?  Is this correct interpretation of RFC2396bis?

Background: I am writing an I-D for XML media types.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-murata-kohn-lilley-xml-00.txt

This I-D allows XPointer as fragment identifiers of application/xml.
In my interpreation, this does not mean that a resolution action
of XPointer must take place.

Cheers,

--
MURATA Makoto (FAMILY Given) <EB2M-MRT@asahi-net.or.jp>