2 Charges Against North Upheld

WASHINGTON —  The judge in the Iran-Contra case refused today to dismiss two of the central charges against Oliver L. North but ruled the third, a wire fraud charge, must be struck from the indictment.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell upheld the legal validity of the charges of conspiracy to defraud the government and theft of government property arising from the diversion of U.S.-Iran arms-sale proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contras. But he dismissed a wire fraud charge, saying it “is, in many ways, a cumulative count” that would only create “substantial confusion in the minds of the jurors.”