Separability and entanglement in 2xN composite quantum systems

We show that all density operators of 2$\times N$--dimensional quantum systems that remain invariant after partial transposition with respect to the first system are separable. Based on this criterion, we derive a sufficient separability condition for general density operators in such quantum systems. We also give a simple proof of the separability criterion in $2\times 2$--dimensional systems [A. Peres, Phys. Rev. Lett {\bf 77}, 1413 (1996)]