``We have received offers from those two cities and it will be one or the other,'' Leblanc said a few hours before the prologue of this year's race.
The itinerary of next year's Tour, which will start from Rouen in Normandy, has been almost completed and will be published in October, he added.
Leblanc said the Tour organisers were willing to start the 1998 race in a foreign country because the prologue, on July 11, would take place just one day before the final of the soccer World Cup in France.
The Tour de France started in a foreign coutry for the first time in 1954 when the race left from Amsterdam. Since then it has started from several European cities, including Brussels, Berlin and San Sebastian, Spain.
The world's greatest cycling race also makes cross-border incursions almost every year. It went to Britain in 1974 and again two years ago.